THE CENTURY AND 
THE SCHOOL 



?&&&■ 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 

DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
TORONTO 



The Century and 
the School 

and 

Other Educational Essays 



BY 
FRANK LOUIS SOLDAN 

Late Superintendent of the St. Louis Public Schools 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1912 

AU rights reserved 



<6^ 



Copyright, 1912 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and clectrotyped. Published February, 1912. 



©■CI.A3(in«34 



PREFACE 

The essays brought together in this volume 
were selected, by a group of his intimate asso- 
ciates, from the manuscripts of Superintend- 
ent F. Louis Soldan, after his death. They 
felt that the spirit which had exerted so 
strong an influence upon public education 
might be kept alive in the minds and hearts of 
teachers through its expression in the literary 
appeals it had made while in the full force of 
its activity. 

The selection of subjects for this purpose 
could not have been more happily made. 
They cover a wide range of related thoughts 
and exhibit the man in his many-sided touch 
with developing youth and the social institu- 
tions of which it was both the care and the in- 
spiring hope. His treatment of the subjects 
is that of a critical though sympathetic student 
of school plans and methods. 

He laughs shams out of court and defends 
with the courage of intelligent conviction the 
ideas and practices which long experience has 
tried and justified. He manifests a soul in 



VI 



Preface 



tune with literary expression. His power to 
catch the dominant chord is manifested in his 
characterization of the aim of Dickens as, 
"The unveiling of divine things in human." 
His analysis of moral values is keen and has 
the precision of a chart of conduct while estab- 
lishing the obligation of individual decision. 

In "Folklore and Fairy Tales" we see his 
intimate acquaintance with the soul of the nat- 
ural child and his practical sense in the use of 
this knowledge in adapting instrumentalities 
and processes to the child's education. 

These essays are informing, but their great- 
est worth is in their buoyant confidence in the 
power of high purpose and strong character. 

His conception of the noble aim of teaching 
is thus expressed: "A hand ready to help, a 
contented mind, an appreciation of those 
treasures that are higher than life itself, this 
is the ethical task which the century demands 
of the school." 

Ben Blewett. 

St. Louis, December, 1911, 



CONTENTS 

The Century and the School 
Morality and Education 
What is a Fad? .... 
Teachers' Duties .... 
Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 
A Visit to German Schools 
Reading in the Higher Grades 
Folklore and Fairy Tales 



i 

38 

58 

77 
100 

139 
172 
191 



vn 



THE CENTURY AND THE SCHOOL 

We are told by philologists that our fore- 
fathers in making the myths which we find in 
their poetry and legends were wiser than they 
knew. In these myths modern philology has 
discovered wonderful truths. It professes to 
know more about Apollo than the Greeks, 
more about Jupiter than the Romans, and 
more about Thor than the Saxons of the 
North. When it is thus the practice to invest 
ancient myths with modern meaning, we may 
be allowed to select one of these myths for the 
purpose of this paper, and try to find in 
ancient lore the foreshadowing of a modern 
view. 

There is no story more prevalent in north- 
ern mythology, than that of little beings, 
gifted with extraordinary powers. In the 
tales of Scotland and of old England the little 
Brownies play an important part. They 
sweep the floor which the servant has neg- 
lected, they do the work which the lazy mortal 
has forgotten to do. They are the working 
spirits, the little active principles. So, in the 



2 The Century and the School 

mythology of the Norse peoples, the giants 
and gods, powerful in stature and deeds, 
seem in reality dependent for their weapons, 
armor, and all their worldly goods upon the 
diligence of those little dwarfs, who are the 
types of wisdom and industry. To their skill 
the gods and giants owe the arms by which 
alone they retain power and sway. And yet 
these little beings live removed from the eyes 
of the world and from the light of day. In 
modest retirement they are the guardians of 
the highest treasures of mountain and mine. 
In the darkness of the caverns they toil and 
labor, they ply the hammer and make for 
Odin the never-missing spear, for Thor the 
terrible hammer; they build for Freya the 
free ship, and they weave the golden hair of 
the goddess of the earth. 

If we are allowed to carry into this story 
an explanation of our own, it seems as if the 
ancient myth foreshadowed a discovery of our 
century, namely, the truth that the events of 
nature and of the world are not brought about 
by Titanic revolutions, but are the result of 
the silent and persistent forces which work 
quietly and unobservedly in every atom and 
cell. Apparently insignificant processes which 
surround us everywhere and at every moment. 



The Century and the School 3 

are sufficient to account for all the changes in 
nature. The little forces shape the world, 
and not the gigantic revolutions of which 
former theories spoke. 

This recognition of the power of the silent 
and little forces of nature, which work out of 
sight, in the depths of the world, is the view 
peculiar to the science of our century. Our 
century has discovered these little powers and 
observed their work in nature. While former 
theories saw in the surface of the earth the 
result of great revolutions and sudden up- 
heavals, the science of our century has found 
that all these forms of geological life are due 
to the steady work of forces which surround 
us and which we can observe in their activity 
every moment. It is the little and insig- 
nificant cause which creates and sustains the 
great and gigantic phenomenon. Before the 
examining glance of science, whatever is great 
dissolves itself, and appears to be the work 
of what seems small and powerless. Those 
bold cliffs and mountains which protect the 
south of England against the fury of the sea, 
appear to the inquisitive eye as untold myriads 
of little shells which in slow accumulation 
have formed mountains. Society too has 
its little powers which compared with the 



4 The Century and the School 

gigantic interests of modern times, with poli- 
tics, commerce, and the wheel-works of 
manufacture and transit and trade, appear 
insignificant and small, but which neverthe- 
less in modest retirement drive the wheels and 
move the loom of time. Among these small 
powers, in which our century has recognized 
a creative and preservative power which sup- 
ports the state and sustains social life, there 
is none humbler but at the same time more 
significant than the school. Like those little 
mythical beings of the old Norse story who 
wrought the arms by which the giants of the 
world maintained their sway, the school 
creates for the state the arms against bar- 
barism and crime, the school in the opinion 
of our century builds the throne on which 
liberty can safely rest, it covers the earth with 
the golden harvest of the peaceful arts. Like 
the Brownies, who were the guardians of great 
treasures, education and the school are the 
guardians of the great treasures of humanity, 
of knowledge, morality, and law. 

According to the view which our century 
takes of education, the school should not only 
be the guardian of the ethical treasures of 
mankind, but also the servant of the aims and 
the objects of the times. 



The Century and the School $ 

All callings have a narrowing influence on 
those that follow them, and the teacher is 
not free from the narrowing influence of 
his humble vocation. "In narrow work the 
mind itself grows narrow" is a true saying. 
Too easily we cling to what is traditional and 
old and a time-honored custom, and it is some- 
times necessary to remind ourselves of the 
old saying of the Roman teacher: "Do not 
educate the child for the school but for life!" 
It is a just demand that the school should 
move along with the progressive movement 
of society at large. Thus it appears that the 
school should be guided by the wants of 
society; but the features of society change 
more quickly than the waves of the river, and 
never more than in this age of quick growth 
and quick decay. The work of adapting the 
school to the changing demands of the times 
is not an easy one. But that system of schools 
which does not move and develop with the 
motion of the times, is not carried along on 
the fresh wave of public opinion and loses 
its place in the sympathies of the people. To 
keep pace with the development of society 
and science, to assimilate what is new, with- 
out discarding what is good in things tradi- 
tional and time-honored, to appreciate new 



6 The Century and the School 

demands and new interests without injustice 
to what is old and tried, this is the task of that 
education which means to be what it ought 
to be, namely, the true servant of the noblest 
aims of our century. The pupil shall enter 
life not with his face turned backward, like 
one who has been trained in the lore of the 
past only, not like a wanderer in the bewilder- 
ing mazes of an unintelligible, unknown 
world, but rather as a new reaper steps into 
the field to engage in work for which his edu- 
cation has endowed him with taste and ability. 
Thus, growing upon the fresh soil of the 
century, the school sends thousands of strong 
roots into the life of the nation and sucks new 
power out of the throbbing heart of the cen- 
tury. Those epochs in education are the 
greatest in which the school has been roused 
from dreams of the past, and linked afresh to 
the bright life of the present. The glorious 
rise of the school during the time of the refor- 
mation began with the moment that Latin 
was displaced from its universal position in 
all the schools, and the vernacular was taught 
to the people to enable them to read the newly- 
translated Bible. What seemed to many the 
ruin or the giving up of the characteristic task, 
the teaching of Latin, was in reality the begin- 



The Century and the School 7 

ning of the modern era in education, during 
which schools have grown so wonderfully that 
no mediaeval mind could conceive of such a 
growth, and no historical parallel can be 
found. 

The next powerful impulse was given to 
the school by Bacon when he confronted the 
humanistic book-wisdom and the Aristotelian 
authority by emphasizing the neglected study 
of nature. With the moment that Pestalozzi's 
spirit conceived the idea of educating the 
masses, an idea ignored by Locke as well as 
by Rousseau, with the moment that Pestalozzi 
wedded the school to the life of the nation, be- 
gan the new era in education in which we live 
at present. The school of our days will 
not lose anything by embracing fully and 
unreservedly the spirit of our century. The 
influence of the school is powerful and stir- 
ring in proportion as it conceives and recog- 
nizes the noblest aims and endeavors of the 
century and tries to teach in accordance with 
them:. Not only usage and traditional meth- 
ods, but also reason and progress should regu- 
late school institutions. 

"Custom calls me to it — 
What custom wills, in all things should we do it, 
The dust of antique time would lie unswept, 
And mountainous error be too highly heaped 
For truth to overpeer." 



8 The Century and the School 

Thus then our century demands that the 
school be the guardian of the best aspirations 
of the times, but it should also be the servant 
of those interests which do not belong to any 
particular time, but to all times, namely, the 
general ethical interests of humanity. 

Our century deserves that the school be 
subservient to it, for no other age has, even 
approximately, recognized the value of edu- 
cation as much as the present, or expressed its 
appreciation in such an active way, by the 
establishment and support of the most won- 
derful educational systems. 

"He who controls the education of a na- 
tion," says Leibnitz, "controls its future." The 
assurance of the duration and perpetuity of 
free institutions lies in the possibility of edu- 
cating a nation so as to make the masses with 
whom ultimately the government of a country 
rests, intelligent and responsible rulers in 
their own affairs. 

There is probably no other institution which 
has been made so extensively the subject of 
attacks and abuse as the school. It has been 
blamed for educating too much and for edu- 
cating too little. It has been censured on 
account of not doing enough to prevent crime 
and criticised for not doing enough to pro- 



The Century and the School 9 

duce wealth. It has been arraigned as an 
enemy of physical health of youth. Every 
class of specialists has demanded that the 
school should do something for the promotion 
of its art, and has denounced it for not doing 
enough. In all these things it is evident that 
much is expected from the school. But even 
in the unreasonable demands made upon it, 
there is an element not entirely unsatisfactory 
to the friends of education, namely, that all 
these demands imply an almost boundless 
confidence in the power of education. It is 
reasonable to suppose that the school can do 
much, but it is foolish to imagine that it can 
do everything. The century has great faith 
in the efficiency and power of the school. In 
all the evils which beset the body politic, the 
school is expected to furnish some remedy 
which will cure or prevent them. 

This belief is characteristic of the century, 
and we do not find fault with it, even when it 
speaks in exaggeration of what the school can 
do for the state, and when it forgets that there 
are many educational factors besides the 
school, that life, family, civil vocations, the 
press, the pulpit are just as important and 
responsible factors in education as the school. 
Neglects and errors in education cannot and 



io The Century and the School 

should not be charged to the school alone. 

There are two distinct classes of demands, 
however, which the century makes upon the 
school. The one is, that the school shall be 
in harmony with the practical aims and with 
the spirit of the times; and the other, that it 
shall help to guard those interests which are 
as old as the human race itself, namely, the 
ethical interests which alone constitute — make 
or render man a civilized being, and make 
uprightness and charity part of his nature. 
The demands of the century on the school are 
then, first, of a practical, and second of an 
ethical character. 

If the practical demand is that the school 
should accord with the spirit of the century, 
it becomes necessary to inquire what the spirit 
of the century is, so that we know according 
to what standard the school should shape its 
course. 

Every age has its own features which ap- 
pear strongly marked in its history, art, 
science, religion, politics, and society; and, 
as the features of a human being change and 
are ennobled in the course of a thoughtful life, 
so the features and the aspect of the times 
change with each newly discovered truth, 
with each world-historical deed. The eternal 



The Century and the School n 

fountain out of which the deeds and thoughts 
of a nation arise wells up forever. The poet 
says, "Ever over the path of mankind flashes, 
like lightning, eternal truth." And thus the 
features of the time are subject to perpetual 
changes. 

May we then be allowed to draw, with a 
few lines, an image of the times, as they 
appear to us, without ignoring the truth that 
the times are not always as they appear to the 
painter; remembering, however, that much of 
the portrait depends on the artist who draws 
it. The one may paint his century with the 
brush of Tintoretto, with bright lights and 
deep shadows, while the other may portray 
his century in a picture after Rembrandt's 
fashion ; the head and brow radiant with light, 
but the heart covered with black shadow and 
gloom. 

In the beginning of the eighteenth century 
American life was still knit together with the 
life of England; and the history of Europe 
was that of America, and therefore in consid- 
ering European history for a moment we con- 
sider what was then American history as well. 

In the latter half of the eighteenth century 
mankind seemed to rise and to shake off the 
fetters of medievalism, which still clung to 



12 The Century and the School 

its limbs and held it in a state of social and 
political bondage. The dormant energy of 
the race awoke; an era of new activity sprang 
suddenly into existence. In politics, in sci- 
ence, in art, a new epoch began. It was a 
revival which was perhaps more transitory, 
but certainly not less important than the great 
revival of the fourteenth and fifteenth centu- 
ries. As in the earlier revival of learning, 
when art broke with the conventional and 
Byzantine models, it seized again upon the 
classical art-forms of antiquity, so, in the 
revival of liberty, the last century resuscitated 
the political forms of antiquity, the idea of 
the Republic was revived, and into this old 
form the century poured its new life. 

Yorktown ended forever the dream of a 
monarchy in America, and the success of the 
new state in its struggle reanimated the ideas 
of liberty in the old world. New America 
and New France arose. Fresh light shone 
forth from the fields of science and art. As 
on one side were the political, so on the other, 
were the scientific systems remodeled and 
re-created. The French revolution brought 
about a new order of society, French science 
produced a new classification of the kingdoms 
of nature, French legislation gave us the only 



The Century and the School 13 

thoroughly modern code of laws, French com- 
merce adopted a new division of weights and 
measures. All this manifests the strong revo- 
lutionary character of the period. In the 
department of letters the same strong pulsa- 
tion was felt, and the heart of the world 
throbbed again with a great period of literary 
and intellectual life. The great names of this 
movement tell its history. In philosophy, 
Condillac, Voltaire, D'Alembert, De Lamet- 
trie, Hume, Kant; in literature, Beaumarchais, 
Diderot, Marmontel, Montesquieu, Rousseau; 
in science, BufTon, Daubenton, Brisson, Geof- 
froy-Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier, Jussieu, Biot, 
Saussure, Watt, Franklin, Jenner. 

It is hardly necessary to say that this re- 
vival of the scientific and literary spirit was 
not confined to France alone. The Italian 
Canova, for instance, the Dane Thorwaldsen, 
the greatest sculptors of modern times, Goethe 
and Schiller, the great poets of Germany, 
belong to the same period. This time of al- 
most feverish activity in science and politics 
was followed by decades of complete prostra- 
tion caused by the fearful wars of the Napo- 
leonic episode. A period of languid reaction 
in all the fields of intellectual work ensued. 
England, after 1815, rested exhausted and 



14 The Century and the School 

almost broken from its gigantic but futile 
efforts against the American colonies, or the 
United States, and against France. 

France, whose revolutionary arms had over- 
run all Europe, had fallen into the hands of 
a soldier of genius, whom the combination of 
all the powers of Europe had dethroned and 
chained to the rocks of Saint Helena; and now 
began throughout Europe a time of political 
oppression. The kings of the old world had 
called on their people to drive out the French 
conquerors, but they soon became afraid of 
the spirit they had conjured up. They sup- 
pressed every manifestation of popular polit- 
ical activity. The press was shorn of its rights 
and deprived of its remaining freedom. All 
Europe was exhausted and rested languidly. 
The era of progress, so suddenly begun, found 
as sudden an end in a period of political decay 
which extended through the first half of the 
nineteenth century. The hope of humanity 
had fled across the Atlantic. America had 
separated her fate from that of the older 
countries, and was the only oasis of freedom 
in a universal desert of tyranny. While 
Europe had broken with the free political 
traditions of the eighteenth century, and was 
uprooting them with merciless fury, they were 



The Century and the School 15 

cherished and put into practice in America. 
The history of the United States forms a quiet 
contrast to this in the growth of the noblest 
ideas which the revival of liberty had brought 
forth in Europe. 

Literature gave evidence of this sudden 
downfall. The struggle against the existing 
order of things, in society and law, was vividly 
depicted in the productions of the leading 
writers of this period. Highwaymen and 
corsairs became ideal types in fiction and 
prose. Byron in England, Alfred de Musset 
in France, Heine and Lenau in Germany, and 
perhaps Wordsworth, whose poetry turned 
away from man and society and glorified 
nature, were the representative names of the 
literature of this period of political slpth, 
inactivity, and stagnation. A kind of apathy 
had taken possession of the European mind, 
and the literature of this period has not un- 
aptly been called the literature of world- 
despair. The more active elements of the 
European races turned their back to the land 
of brutal oppression and found homes in the 
valleys and prairies of the great republic. 
The era of indifference gave rise even to a 
new school of philosophy. Kant's school, 
represented after his death by Hamilton, 



1 6 The Century and the School 

Comte and others — which had arrived at the 
conclusion that there could not be much cer- 
tainty about external things anyway — and 
the Hegelian school with its encouraging 
optimism, was followed by the dreary school 
of Schopenhauer who saw in death and rest 
the only true happiness of man. The political 
atmosphere was stifling; the governments were 
leagued against their peoples. But what was 
invulnerable to attack was not safe against 
aspersion. Satire and skepticism, Punch and 
Thackeray, took their place in the literature 
of the day and in the art of the period. In- 
activity became a political doctrine. A kind 
of ethical materialism arose in refined society 
which sought to ameliorate the emptiness of 
existence by sensuous enjoyment. 

While this was the drift of the surface 
culture, a fresh under-current gradually but 
steadily welled up from the deepest heart of 
the people, and a wonderful wave from eco- 
nomic and social springs led to a regeneration 
of public life. Creative power, of which 
governments seemed devoid, still lived in the 
sinews and marrow of our civilization, and it 
burst forth through the channel of the indus- 
trial activities and invigorated afresh the old 
world. Practical life lightly blew away the 



The Century and the School 17 

cobwebs of the literature and metaphysics of 
quietism. The era of indifference came to a 
sudden end when a new revolution, like an 
electric shock, passed over the world in 1848. 
Thirty years of political commotion followed, 
during which great nations like Italy and 
Germany sprang into existence, and the noble 
new republic of France was established in the 
midst of unspeakable difficulties. During all 
this time the star of our republic had risen 
higher in the western skies, and growing in 
splendor until it outshone all other constella- 
tions, dazzled the eyes of the world. A peo- 
ple had risen out of nothing to rank as the first 
nation of the earth. The depression of the 
old empires served only to raise the new em- 
pire higher. The miseries of Europe were 
the prosperity of America. Each act of op- 
pression, each new revolution choked in blood 
had thrown myriads of strong men and women 
on the shores of the republic. This period of 
decomposition and destruction of the old world 
was an unceasingly creative era for the United 
States. Here a continuous, peaceful growth 
had matured the political ideas which the last 
century had taught, and on whose destruction 
and uprooting the European governments had 
wasted their energies. Here, out of separated 



1 8 The Century and the School 

colonies a confederation of states arose. It 
was the era of a more perfect union which cul- 
minated in the creation of the United States. A 
process of unification had begun, and its first 
stage went on through sixty years of the nine- 
teenth century, during which time, in the 
fermentation of political agitation, the disin- 
tegrating questions arose to the surface, ready 
to be taken off. Up to the time of the civil 
war, the nation was still divided by the incom- 
patible systems of slave labor and competitive 
work, and by an honest diversity of opinion 
in regard to constitutional provisions. But 
these distinctions having been removed by the 
results of the war, we have, in place of what 
the Constitution calls a more perfect union 
of the states, the most perfect union of South 
and North, a union which will last forever 
because it is now based on a community of in- 
terests. The past history of America, more 
wonderful than a fairy tale, is but "an earnest 
of what shall be." We see the process of uni- 
fication going on and completing itself in a 
thousand ways. What a wonderful history 
was ours, even while the land was divided in 
itself! What untold possibilities are there in 
the future now when South and North have 
the same hope, the same aspiration and 



The Century and the School 19 

mingle their energy in one mighty current! 

Before the beginning of this era one might 
have drawn a line across the continent and 
said: "Here ends the community of interests; 
here is the North and there is the South ; here 
is agriculture and there is manufacture and 
commerce; here is black, there is white labor; 
here are emigrants, there are slaves; here is 
public, there is private education." But 
where is this line of demarcation now? It 
has vanished in the quick process which now 
is forming the most perfect union of all times. 
Already it is impossible to designate the South 
as an exclusively agricultural and the North 
as the exclusively manufacturing division. 
North or South, it is the same people, the 
same characteristic energy. 

Already it is impossible to draw the line 
between North and South and to say: public 
schools here, private schools there. Much 
remains to be done yet, but on the other hand 
there is no feature of the last twenty years that 
calls for more sincere admiration than the 
noble work done by the South to educate her 
people, both white and black. 

The political features in the history of the 
nineteenth century, great as they are, brilliant 
as they appear, are after all only details. The 



20 The Century and the School 

spirit and essence of the century lie not in the 
great political actions of the age, not in the 
pomp and splendor of war, but finds its motive 
powers and levers rather in the quiet shop of 
the artisan, in the busy counting-room of the 
merchant, and in the retired laboratories of 
science. By the invention and perfection of 
machines the labor of the artisan and me- 
chanic has lost its old form. The production 
and manufacture of articles for the needs 
of human society has experienced almost 
infinite expansion. The constant cooperation 
of many hands necessitated by the new form 
of production, and on the other hand the 
desire to facilitate the exchange of the multi- 
tude of products, has led, with other causes, 
to the incomparably rapid growth of cities in 
Europe and America, and new problems for 
legislation and education have been created 
by city life. 

Production on a vast scale requires also 
extensive means of transportation, and there- 
fore the development of the latter keeps pace 
with the steadily increasing growth of fac- 
tory work. The new means of transportation 
stand in the closest connection with the growth 
of manufacture, for without the machine labor 
of our century and its mass of productions, 



The Century and the School 21 

without the involved necessity of instant and 
extensive distribution of the manufactured 
articles, neither railroad nor telegraph could 
exist. The limit of the development of the 
one is the limit of the growth of the other. 
Our century has printing presses which can 
print, cut, fold, and fasten a vast number of 
sheets per hour, and the invention is capable of 
further development, but the true limit lies in 
the demand, in the number of readers or sub- 
scribers. It is useless to manufacture articles 
by the million which are demanded by the 
hundred only. This mass production which 
is characteristic of our century presupposes 
vastly increased consumption. The existence 
of countless factories and machines is in itself 
a proof of the fact of increased consumption. 
The enormously increased rate of production 
is intelligible only on the presupposition that 
each individual human being enjoys a greater 
share of those things which make life pleasant. 
If it is true that the possibility of civilization 
depends on a certain amount of luxury, and 
that no nation can make any progress in the 
former unless its labor has procured for it 
wealth and luxury, it follows that in a period 
like ours, where the individual commands 
more wealth, greater comfort, civilization and 



22 The Century and the School 

refinement can spread more widely and be- 
come the attributes of the masses of the people 
instead of remaining the privilege of the few. 
Of these characteristics of the century the 
school must take cognizance. In the past 
period of individualized labor each mechanic 
worked for himself, independent of all his 
fellow-workmen. The article made in the 
shop received its whole form, from the raw 
material to its finished state, through the same 
hand. For this reason each workman had to 
be trained so as to master the whole process ; 
the mode of production which our century 
has invented demands extreme division of 
labor. A piece of work passes through many 
hands before it is completed. The individual 
worker no longer needs the knowledge of the 
whole process, but skill in a small part only 
of the process. It has become easier to learn 
a trade than it was formerly, but, for the same 
reason, the workman is less sure of retain- 
ing his position. In this complex system of 
divided labor each individual becomes de- 
pendent on the other, and individual inde- 
pendence in work has disappeared. 

The new mode of production gives to labor 
the character of restlessness. The individual 
must do his work quickly and hand it over to 



The Century and the School 23 

the waiting hands of his fellow-workman, or 
the movement of the whole chain will be in- 
terrupted. The golden, comfortable easy time 
of the artisan of the past era, the pleasant, slow 
rhythm of rest and work has disappeared, 
driven away by the whir of spindle and spool. 
Rip Van Winkle would wait in vain today 
for master-tailor and master-shoemaker to 
accompany him to the linden tree before the 
inn for their Monday morning potion. The 
romance of rest with intervals of work, the 
romance of easy individual labor belongs to 
the past. In our century each man must labor 
as one of the grand army of workers, and obey 
the commands of his calling at all times, at 
all hours. If he wants to work at all, he must 
move in the strictly circumscribed course, and 
with the regularity and precision of a wheel 
in a never-resting, huge machine. 

The feverish, restless motion which ma- 
chine labor requires has exerted an influence 
on the mind which extends beyond the prov- 
ince of manufacture and commerce. It has 
marked the whole age with its characteristics, 
so that all the callings of peace and war bear 
the stamp of highest strain and energetic 
haste. The other characteristic of the century, 
namely, the rapidity and far-reaching impetus 



24 The Century and the School 

of the means of transit, has perhaps contrib- 
uted still more than the changed forms of 
labor, to give to this period the peculiar char- 
acteristics of which we have spoken. For 
railroads and steamships and telegraph and 
postal facilities do not serve for the distribu- 
tion of material wealth merely, they also com- 
municate and distribute intellectual treasures 
and spread and scatter human sympathy and 
thought all over the world. The peaceful 
victories and conquests of mankind in trade 
and commerce, the inventions of genius, the 
wisdom and folly of political experiments are 
daily communicated by telegraph and press 
to all the cultured people of the earth. They 
also serve the ends of universal justice: the 
wicked tremble when they hear of crime 
denounced and punished; when they hear of 
the vindicated majesty of the law; and noble 
hearts beat higher when they see that human- 
ity, without distinction of language or race, 
defends and admires what is good and just. 
The sufferings of a nation, of a country find a 
thousand tongues and a responsive echo in the 
help of distant lands. 

Traveling and the facilitated communica- 
tion by letter, the press, the telegraph educate 
man's political sense by teaching him the 



The Century and the School 25 

political methods of other states. Nations be- 
come acquainted with each other, and discover 
qualities and interests which they possess in 
common. The existence of the American 
republic is a constant lesson and invitation 
to the nations of the earth, and France has 
profited by it in our own time. In no former 
age has the cause of self-government expe- 
rienced such an advance as in our day. 

Our century has given to liberty a new 
foundation. On the basis of economic inter- 
ests modern civil freedom has arisen and be- 
come strong. 

As a subordinate result of the perfection of 
the means of communication, it deserves to be 
mentioned that the stable or localized char- 
acter of the civilization of former centuries 
has suffered considerable change. Nations 
intermingle, they see and know more of each 
other than formerly. To these characteristics 
of our century, our own country owes much of 
its wonderful growth. An event unheard of in 
all history begins and continues through the 
century, inaugurated by the leveling, equal- 
izing tendencies of the eighteenth century. 
From all the parts of Europe a mighty stream 
of all races and tongues issues forth and pours 
its waves into the prairies and valleys of the 



26 The Century and the School 

new continent, and with marvelous rapidity 
they form a new nation, with sharply defined 
national characteristics; a nation welded to- 
gether so indissolubly by the cohesive forces 
of free institutions that even a terrible civil 
war cannot sever it. In former ages a small 
fraction of mankind was called the floating 
population. Today the name may be given 
in a certain sense to almost the whole world. 
The individual no longer knows with absolute 
certainty that he will finish his days in this or 
that town. Not many persons today will 
resemble Kant, the philosopher, in this re- 
spect, who never in his life went twenty miles 
beyond the limits of the little city in which he 
was born. 

I have attempted to draw a picture of the 
century in which we live. We cannot with- 
draw from its influence. Goethe says : "As if 
driven by invisible spirits, the sun-horses of 
the times run away with the light vehicle of 
our individual fate; and nothing remains for 
us but to grasp the reins with undaunted en- 
ergy and, guiding to the right and to the left, 
to turn the wheels from rocks and precipice. 
Whither we go — who knows? Why, we 
hardly know whence we came." 

It remains for us to consider how the school 



The Century and the School 27 

may be made serviceable to the spirit of the 
century. The demands of the present period 
are not to be taken as substitutes for the ethical 
and generally human aims of the school of all 
times, but rather as their complement. The 
latter must not be contradicted by the former, 
for the ethical aims are of imperishable and 
everlasting value. The education of the child 
to truth, virtue, humanity, to charity, and 
manly strength, aspires to aims as eternal and 
immutable as the stars above. But to these 
ethical aims the demands of the century are 
added. They are not new, but the old de- 
mands have become more pointed, more in- 
tense, and the tasks have been raised to a 
higher power. 

Our age is an age of effort, work, and labor. 
The activity of the school is therefore di- 
rected toward a double task: the imparting of 
knowledge, and the formation of a habit of 
unremitting, steady industry. No principle 
needs more thorough inculcation than that: 
"I will do what I ought to do." Harmony 
between duty and will is the basis of moral 
culture and of individual happiness. Not 
only skill in his work, but love for labor and 
activity should be the gift of the school to the 
young being when he enters upon his path in 



28 The Century and the School 

life, if he is to find there satisfaction and hap- 
piness. In former epochs the aim of the civil 
education of the mechanic or artisan in his 
craft was the adaptation to and training for 
a special trade or calling, and the method was 
to lead him to isolated, independent work. 
The culture of our century demands work 
with others. Its principle is no longer inde- 
pendence, but interdependence. In the place 
of the knowledge of the whole process, the 
condition for excellence now is the utmost 
manual skill and dexterity in the detail. 
Formerly man completed the work and the 
tool was his assistant, now the machine per- 
forms the task and man helps it. Formerly 
his knowledge of the craft afforded to the 
workman protection against being pushed out 
of his place ; now, in some trades the process 
can be learned by a tyro in a few weeks 
or days. Not unfrequently trades disappear 
altogether when a new machine has made 
them superfluous. Formerly the country boy 
might be trained exclusively for country life 
and the city boy for the city. Now, no cer- 
tainty of future occupation can be inferred 
from present position. 

These conditions the new school must con- 
sider. When the special trade no longer 



The Century and the School 29 

affords any security of continuous employ- 
ment, a more comprehensive and more thor- 
ough schooling can impart to the boy greater 
powers of adaptation, and open to him a wider 
field. Machine labor has never lessened the 
value of intelligence and of steady character. 
For the very reason that the mechanical, 
spiritless work is done by fettered nature her- 
self, the intelligent human power is enhanced 
in value. With every new machine intelli- 
gent directive power becomes more indispen- 
sable, since by bungling or stupid labor the 
danger is multiplied of immense loss. The 
further the abilities of man are developed, 
the greater is the field in which he can choose 
a vocation. How many fields of labor, to 
mention a single illustration, are opened to the 
boy by a knowledge of a single study, that of 
drawing, which without such knowledge 
would remain closed to him. 

School education, then, which does not 
merely educate the memory, but also the 
senses and the hand, tends to increase the more 
stringent conditions of existence. Not so 
much the mass and quantity of things known 
form the test of a good school, as the strength 
and skill of hand and eye, of judgment and 
will. The things taught are means, not ends. 



30 The Century and the School 

The century demands that the school should 
work for life. The changes made in the most 
progressive school systems, as for instance the 
introduction of drawing, of the manual train- 
ing of the kindergarten and its cultivation of 
the senses, all these innovations give evidence 
of the responsive tendency of the school and 
of the teaching profession to do justice to 
reasonable demands. It is both unwise and 
unjust in criticising the schools to dwell ex- 
clusively on what ought to be done, and to 
ignore the great things already accomplished. 
Enough, it is true, remains to be done by 
school and teacher, and may the day never 
come when professional self-sufficiency thinks 
that our schools cannot be perfected. But 
the fact that there are things that have not 
been accomplished by the school is rather a 
basis for hope than for criticism. 

" Labor with what zeal we will, 
Something still remains undone, 
Something uncompleted still, 
Waits the rising of the sun." 

Widened and extensive intelligence, narrow 
and intensive activity, contact and sympathy 
with universal interests, and devotion to the 
special vocation are the peculiar conditions 
of our century's life. The former teach man 



The Century and the School 31 

to find his place in life, the latter how to 
fill it. The school is carried along by this 
current. That flaunting wisdom which knows 
a little of everything and nothing well is 
worthless — "of all things a little, but one thing 
well" is a much better principle. The school 
must refuse to teach more than can be taught 
well. But, since the whole field of science 
cannot be grasped even in its elements, it re- 
mains the task of the school to fix its attention 
on those things which may be well learned by 
the child. The former mountebank systems 
of teaching, which shouted in street and 
market how many things they could teach and 
which spread over everything, were shallow 
in all things. The principle of school educa- 
tion is depth and thoroughness in a few things, 
and then if there is time general knowledge. 
Man may study a multitude of things, but one 
thing, and if it were the smallest, he should 
know well. In regard to the selection of the 
subjects the decision rests on the question what 
is most important for the life of the day and 
for the life of humanity. In one thing that 
is thoroughly grasped, the mind seizes the 
whole world. "That teacher," says Goethe, 
"who understands how to present a single 
noble deed, a single good poem, so as to rouse 



32 The Century and the School 

the child's feeling performs more than one 
who teaches a whole series of lower forms of 
nature by shape and name; for the whole re- 
sult is what we may know without all this 
trouble; namely, that man bears in himself 
more perfectly and more uniquely than all 
other beings the image of God. The indi- 
vidual may be at liberty to busy himself with 
what attracts him, what he delights in, or 
what he considers useful, but the proper study 
of humanity is man." 

The school should be of service to the na- 
tion also. Without intermission, year after 
year multitudes of emigrants arrive at our 
shores. The parents speak a hundred tongues, 
the children soon speak but one, the language 
of this country. To each child the school 
gives a new tongue, to each home it sends a 
youthful interpreter of American life and in- 
stitutions. The school is building up the na- 
tion. The child that has gone through a pub- 
lic school is an American, no matter where he 
first saw the light of the sun. Thus language, 
in all its forms, becomes the most important 
study of the school. It contains the key to 
all things, human and divine. 

There is another demand of the nation on 
the school. Lessons of history should be 



The Century and the School 33 

taught and taught not simply as chronological 
curiosities, but as truths appealing to thought 
and to rouse and train patriotic feelings in the 
young mind. \ 

Since the school is to prepare for life, both 
subject-matter and method of instruction 
should be living and real. The printed page 
is and ever will be a great medium for the con- 
veying of information, but it is not the only 
medium. Besides mastering the printed page, 
the child should learn how to derive informa- 
tion from the greatest of all sources of infor- 
mation, greater even than books, namely, the 
world without and the mind within. Words 
remain empty caskets if left without a knowl- 
edge of things, which the child may gain by 
using his senses and by cultivating his power 
of observation. Things then should be studied, 
as far as the nature of the subject allows, and 
not merely their weak reflection in books. 
Without sense-training and the knowledge of 
things, words have but a dream-like existence. 
The school must not be merely a reading-room 
or recitation room, but must present, both in 
its selection of lessons and its apparatus, a 
piece of reality and life. 

In regard to methods of teaching, our cen- 
tury has firmly established the principle of 

3 



34 The Century and the School 

self-activity and industry. The pupil cannot 
be independent, he is a child and needs guid- 
ance. He cannot be allowed to have his own 
way always. Nothing is more apt to weaken 
the child than the favorite maxim, to let the 
child alone, to let him do what he pleases. He 
must struggle for freedom from his own 
whims and caprices. He must learn to do 
what he should do. On the other hand, the 
boy must become independent intellectually, 
and, for this reason, he must learn to find 
knowledge in the objective world by his own 
eyes. Knowledge must be conquered, in order 
to be wholly possessed. The teacher may 
guard the pupil against hurtful errors, he may 
point out to him the road to knowledge, he 
may lead him, but he must not attempt to carry 
him. Without the charm of self-activity 
even the new toy ceases to be of interest to the 
child. In the process of learning, therefore, 
the mind of the pupil should not be in the 
attitude of receiving, but rather in that of 
grasping knowledge. Schopenhauer says 
bluntly, but truly: "Truth that is received 
merely and committed to memory, sticks to 
man's organization like an artificial limb, a 
false tooth, a wax nose. . . . But knowledge 
gained by one's own thinking resembles the 



The Century and the School 35 

natural limb; it alone belongs to us fully." 
The century has a democratic, equalizing, 
and harmonizing tendency, and the school 
partakes of it. The increase in the facilities 
of intercommunication gradually effaces the 
external differences between nations 1 , and 
dulls the sense of the individual in regard to 
these distinctions. Here again the school is 
guided by the spirit of the century. No 
caste, no social barriers which separate man 
from man are recognized in the school. The 
school unites in its precincts the children of 
the rich and of the poor, of all classes of 
society, of all nationalities and of all creeds; 
all receive the same education. Education 
has become the temple of the nation; all be- 
lieve in it, all are united in its support; in its 
walls dwells the whole future generation. 
Everywhere becomes apparent the tendency 
to efface unreal distinctions, and to make the 
individual the image of the noblest features 
of humanity. The school has become the 
most universal of all human institutions. In 
all of them there are divisions, in it there is 
none. Education embraces with the same 
love Jew and Gentile, for it sees the type of 
humanity in each child. 

Let us devote a moment to that side of edu- 



36 The Century and the School 

cation which no age can transform, and no 
century can alter; to that side of education 
which does not prepare for the macrocosm of 
life without, but which seeks to build up a 
world within; that schooling which educates 
man not for others, but for himself, and which 
teaches him to find happiness in himself and 
in his deeds. Religion is taught by church 
and pulpit, but the school cannot remain idle 
in the work of ethical education. 

The school, it has been said, should edu- 
cate for life. Man's life, however, glitters 
in double colors. He lives a life within and 
a life without. His eye sees the sun of the 
world, but deep in his heart rise the stars of 
his own fate. The struggle for existence 
which life brings with it is not always a 
physical struggle; it may be a strife for 
spiritual treasures, for unsullied name and 
untarnished honor, a struggle for ethical 
existence. 

The deepest soul of man must become the 
anchoring ground of the truth that man's 
higher nature must not be allowed to suffer in 
the struggle and in the race for gain. Higher 
than the treasures of the world he must learn 
to esteem justice and truth; higher than 
worldly gain the love of home and kindred, 



The Century and the School 37 

of neighbor and friend, and faith and fidelity 
to the state. 

These teachings school and family must 
foster, and engrave them in the soul of the 
child so that they sink deep into the innermost 
nature of the man. The life of man is a strug- 
gle for better days toward which hope beck- 
ons with a smile. All hunt for treasures, 
which few only find. Unmixed happiness is 
a rare guest in the house of man, but disap- 
pointment and care come like the days of the 
year. We cannot escape the sorrows of life, 
for we carry them with us. 

" Behind the rider sitteth dark-faced care, 
And with the sailor sails she through the waves." 

If thus life mingles light and shadow, if 
happiness cannot be found in market and 
street, education must teach the child to find 
content and happiness where alone they will 
not flee — in his own heart. A hand ready 
to help, a contented mind, an appreciation of 
those treasures that are higher than life itself, 
this is the ethical task which the century 
demands from the school. 



MORALITY AND EDUCATION 

Morality and intelligence are closely con- 
nected. This does not mean that an intelli- 
gent man is always moral, nor that a person, 
in order to be moral, must have attained a 
high degree of intelligence. Both proposi- 
tions would be obviously untrue. Still there 
can be no morality without the gift of intel- 
ligence. The animal, because it is devoid of 
personality and reason, is morally irrespon- 
sible. As long as the infant has not arrived 
at the age of reason, he is incapable of moral 
or immoral action. The insane person, 
through his loss of reason, is placed beyond 
the sphere of morality. Sin cannot have a 
beginning in the world until man has eaten 
from the tree of knowledge. 

While the connection between intelligence! 
and morality is evident, there is, on the other 
hand, the fact that the education of the head 
does not run in a line exactly parallel with 
the training of the heart, and the development 
of intelligence does not carry with it a cor- 
responding progress in morals. Rousseau as- 

38 



Morality and Education 39 

serted in his famous Dijon prize essay that 
the progress in science and art contributed 
nothing to the purification of morals. The 
question whether the advance of knowledge 
has been accompanied by a corresponding de- 
gree of moral progress has been discussed 
frequently, and is not likely to be closed. 

With every intellectual conception of right, 
there is inseparably connected the idea of the 
undeniable duty of doing what is known to be 
right. The living connection between know- 
ing what is right and willing it, between moral 
intelligence and moral intention is obvious. 
The absolute and last bases in intelligence 
which morality must necessarily have, is the 
distinction between right and wrong, and the 
conception of right doing as an imperative 
duty and hence a constant intention of the 
soul. An action in order to be moral must 
flow from a moral intention. Dr. Johnson 
said: "The morality of an action depends 
upon the motive from which we act. If I 
fling half a crown to a beggar with intention 
to break his head, and he picks it up and buys 
victuals with it, the physical effect is good, 
but with respect to me the action is very 
wrong." 

With all this intimate connection between 



40 The Century and the School 

intelligence and morality, there is a bridge 
between the knowledge and intention, on one 
side, and action, on the other, which must be 
passed to constitute a moral deed. The moral 
frailty of human life consists not so much in 
not knowing what is right, nor in the lack of 
a genial and very general intention to do the 
right thing, but in failing to join the action to 
the intention, in given cases. To know what 
is right is evidently not morality, nor is, 
strictly speaking, doing what is right moral- 
ity, because when such deed is merely acci- 
dental and has nothing to do with the will of 
the person, it is deprived of its moral element. 
Moral action combines knowledge of the 
right and the intention to act in accordance 
with such knowledge. Connected with intel- 
ligence on one side, morality is connected 
with action on the other. There can be no 
morality if it remains a matter of contempla- 
tion. Good intentions are important as the 
beginning of morality, but if they find no 
fruition in action they may be the cheap pride 
of a soul that is on the road to perdition. In 
active life alone can moral virtues arise. 

Not every kind of activity has the moral 
element in it. The moral element does not 
appear when man is dealing with things, but 



Morality and Education 41 

rather in his dealings with other human 
beings. One of the earliest views of the nature 
of virtue is Aristotle's, who defined it as "a 
proficiency in willing what is in conformity 
to reason.'' He believed that virtue might 
be developed from potentiality to actuality, 
which is to say from a possibility of a virtuous 
life to a virtuous life in fact, through constant 
practical action alone. Morality is insepa- 
rably connected with action. Aristotle has this 
connection of virtue and moral habit in mind 
when he says that the word ethics, which de- 
notes the principles of moral virtues, is prob- 
ably derived from a similar word meaning 
custom, since it is only by repeated acts that 
a moral habit can be acquired. In Aristotle's 
definition there is already contained the ap- 
preciation of the value of habits of life that 
tend in the direction of virtue. The educa- 
tional transition from unreasoning habit to 
conscious moral action in human life may be 
made through the early compulsory practice 
of a virtue commanded by external force. The 
early habit, originally acquired through the 
compulsion of parent and educator may, in 
the end, become the cherished and revered 
object of the free individual will. There is 
profound wisdom in the saying of Hamlet: 



42 The Century and the School 

"Assume a virtue, if you have it not. 
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat — 
Of habits evil — is angel yet in this, 
That to the use of actions fair and good 
He likewise gives a frock or livery, 
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight ; 
And that shall lend a kind of easiness 
To the next abstinence : the next more easy ; 
For use can almost change the stamp of nature, 
And master thus the devil, or throw him out 
With wondrous potency." 

Morality and Institutional Life 

While morality assumes three directions, 
namely, towards self, towards others and 
towards God, its rise as a factor of human life 
seems to be more intimately connected with 
the rise of human society. It is only when 
man has intimate intercourse with others that 
the moral sentiment will be developed. Sewall 
says that morality is the relation between per- 
sons, not between persons and things. 

As long as man lived in a savage condition 
morality can hardly be said to have existed, 
because the hand of the savage is raised 
against every other not in immediate family 
or tribal connection. Morality begins with 
the beginning of institutional life. With the 
advent of tribal organization among the un- 
civilized nations, their first code of ethics must 
have had a beginning. 



Morality and Education 43 

Not only is institutional life the condition 
of the beginning of morality, but family, state, 
society and church continue to promote its 
development. That the state is, in itself, a 
moral agency, even the ancients recognized, 
and the middle ages, in their wisest repre- 
sentatives reiterated the same conclusion. In 
Plato's ethical doctrines general happiness 
was shown to flow only from the general good. 
The ethical aim with him was to strive 
towards resemblance to God, in whom moral 
intelligence, moral will, and moral action 
were identical. The divine will, therefore, 
which the individual should study, Plato 
found inscribed in the state as well as in the 
human conscience; he held that in the insti- 
tutions of the state the moral law was written 
in larger letters than in the individual mind. 
Dante, too, connected private and public 
morality with institutional life. The fearful 
depravity of society during his age he attrib- 
uted directly to the degeneracy of civil and 
political government, and expected a revival 
of public morality from regeneration of 
institutional life. 

All moral training naturally takes the two 
directions of repression and of stimulation. 
There is a third higher element, that of a self- 



44 The Century and the School 

poised rational and moral will, identifying 
itself with the moral law. To moral action 
and self-denial it adds the insight that in 
these two is found the eternal law of God and 
the universal will of the individual soul. 
Moral action precedes, full moral insight 
must follow. Repression and stimulation, 
the spiritual "Thou shalt not" and "Thou 
shalt", form the everlasting phases of moral 
reflection. In the schoolroom the "don't" and 
the "do" alternate. Dante in speaking of 
the moral influence of institutional life illus- 
trates restraint and stimulation in image of 
bridle and spur. Coleridge speaks of Chris- 
tian ethics and their definition in a similar 
way. "What the duties of morality are, the 
apostle instructs the believer in full, compri- 
sing them under the two heads of negative and 
positive; negative, to keep himself pure from 
the world; and positive, beneficence from 
loving-kindness, that is, love of his fellow-men 
(his kind) as himself. Last and highest come 
the spiritual, comprising all the truths, acts 
and duties, that have an especial reference to 
the timeless, the permanent, the eternal, to the 
sincere love of the true as truth, of the good as 
good, and of God as both in one. 
While in the consideration of the principles 



Morality and Education 45 

of morality we found it based on the presup- 
position of intelligence, in the moral training 
of the child the processes seem reversed. All 
moral instruction appealing to intelligence is 
preceded by fixed moral habits and years of 
practice in moral action. It is, in fact, the 
latest step in moral training that the indivi- 
dual is led to conceive that what was first done 
by habit and custom, perhaps enforced by dis- 
cipline, is an inviolable moral law to which 
absolute obedience is a duty. As a further 
step in the growth of moral consciousness, the 
human being discovers that the moral law 
coming from without is reflected and echoed 
by his own soul and conscience within. He 
finds that his best self, his strongest and most 
persistent will, tends, unbidden, in the same 
direction as the eternal commandment. His 
will has become identical with the divine will. 
When man in acting the moral commandment 
acts his own individual will he has attained 
freedom. 

This is the thought in Tennyson's lines, 
"Our wills are ours to make them thine." 
This seems to be the meaning of Aristotle's 
peculiar doctrine of the dianoetic or intel- 
lectual virtues which he explains as being 
science, art and reason, while he calls justice 



46 The Century and the School 

and the ordinary moral habits of civic life the 
ethical virtues. To rise above the mere prac- 
tice of virtues, and find in moral action the 
divine commandment, as well as the impulse 
of our best reason, is the highest spiritual 
phase of ethics. 

If we turn, for a moment, towards the steps 
by which the moral movement may be carried 
on as a process of self-education, we find that 
it implies the subjugation of the natural self 
to the purposes of civilized life and of ra- 
tional aims. The subordination to the divine 
will is not simply an abstract or theological 
thought, but it means the practical moral task 
of subordinating the individual to the general 
law in the human world, which finds its 
strongest expression perhaps in institutional 
life. It is more, however, than mere subor- 
dination, for this has an element of passivity 
in it, which is contrary to the characteristic of 
morality, as a form of activity. Besides the 
duty of subordination to the general law, 
there is the other moral duty, of at least equal 
value, of giving real existence externally to 
the promptings of the moral self within. 
Identification of the human will with the 
divine implies that the former should be 
actively engaged in creative, practical work 



Morality and Education 47 

and enlist its energies persistently in the serv- 
ice of the true, the beautiful and the good, so 
that they may be realized in the life of man 
and his institutions. 

The preceding exposition has attempted to 
show that morality is closely connected with 
action, as well as with will and intelligence. 
It has laid stress on the dependence of moral- 
ity on institutional life. We shall need these 
premises in discussing the question as to the 
means school education has at its command 
in inculcating morality. 

When the moral influences of school teach- 
ing are discussed, some stress is usually laid 
on the merely external and formal influence 
which is found in the silence that prevails 
in the schoolroom, on the regularity and 
punctuality of attendance, and the like. There 
can be no doubt that each of these and a mul- 
titude of other school practices imply lessons 
of self-control, which cannot fail to have a 
moral tendency. But, after all, these prac- 
tices are merely external, and are by no means 
characteristics peculiar to the school alone. 
Regularity and punctuality form part of a 
large number of occupations, but it is never 
claimed that they make these occupations any 
more moral than they would be without them. 



48 The Century and the School 

Silence may accompany sin and crime; it is 
the practice of thief and boodler, and has, 
evidently, in itself, no inherent moral mean- 
ing. While conceding that the indirect effect 
of these so-called schoolroom virtues tends 
towards self-control, and that habits of self- 
control have a moral tendency, it is neverthe- 
less true that their moral value is relative. 

School, however, may exert a moral in- 
fluence through its government. It is an 
organization in which many join hands in a 
common purpose, and unite their efforts in 
common activity. A well-organized school 
is a commonwealth and has an institutional 
life which makes it resemble (on a small 
scale, yet large enough for the child) the great 
institutions of society and state. In view of 
the frequently expressed opinion that the 
school in order to have any moral influence 
whatever, must embody some formal lessons 
in morality in its curriculum, it will be well 
to dwell for a moment on the moral influence 
which the school exerts by its organization, 
aside from the influence of direct intellectual 
or moral lessons. With the beginning of 
school instruction two new elements are in- 
troduced into the child's life; a new purpose 
and a new social relation. Until then his 



Morality and Education 49 

principal duty had been to behave himself. 
His life was largely self-centered. Now he 
is taught to subordinate his self to some exter- 
nally imposed duty. He is expected to show 
devotion to the task of learning. It is a 
characteristic of the period of school educa- 
tion that the child must learn to forego his 
childish inclinations and give himself to the 
first steady, serious work of life. 

"Self" no longer thrones supreme in the 
child-soul; he learns the first lesson of sub- 
ordination to the purposes of life. 

The home life of the child which precedes 
the school is based on the ethical elements of 
natural affection and love. Love and obe- 
dience form the ethical circle of family life. 
The parent's will is the child's law. When 
the child enters the school his individuality 
is brought into contact with his equals. The 
conditions which originally caused the rise of 
morality in the history of the race are here 
reproduced, for, in a measure, the child in 
going to school becomes a factor in a kind of 
communal life. To his own will there are 
opposed the limits of other wills, and he has 
to respect the rights of their individuality. 
His subjective inclination can no longer rule 
his actions ; he meets an objective law to which 



£o The Century and the School 

the government and discipline of the school 
enforce obedience. He gets the first invalu- 
able experience of the power and influence of 
public opinion. He learns gradually to ad- 
just himself to standards of deportment, and 
to comply with rules of action, which are the 
same for all. He learns to make his conduct 
conform to a universal law; this training, 
imparted in many ways in every school, en- 
forces the principles which lie at the very root 
of all moral action. 

The pupil's relation to the teacher is sur- 
rounded by moral influences. In the eyes of 
the child the teacher is the objective embodi- 
ment of the general law to which he is bound 
to yield obedience. Nor is this simply a ficti- 
tious relation. In the public school teacher, 
appointed by the representatives of the people, 
paid by the whole community, the authority 
of the state is represented as a matter of fact, 
and the child feels instinctively that in the 
order and discipline of the school there is a 
reflection of the law of the community. The 
full moral effect of the school, as representing 
the child's first contact with institutional life, 
is best attained when the teacher, in directing, 
governing and disciplining his pupils subdues 
the merely personal element of caprice in him- 



Morality and Education 51 

self, and bases the rules of conduct which he 
lays down for the individual child on the 
obligation of the latter to respect the rights 
of others. Even the petty schoolroom offenses, 
such as talking, disorder, can, as a rule, be 
shown to be infringements of the rights of the 
other children, who have a claim to the whole 
time of the teacher and the full benefits of the 
school. Respect for the rights of the school 
community and subordination of individual 
caprice to the needs of the common task are 
the central ideas that should underlie the dis- 
cipline of a room. 

School government, however, carries the 
moral training of the child beyond this first 
stage. At the beginning, the absolute force 
of the universal law is represented through 
the public opinion of the class, and the 
authority of the teacher. As the child's 
power of reasoning and his intelligence de- 
velop, he sees in the rules of conduct, in the 
order that has been imposed by the teacher's 
authority, the necessary conditions for the 
progress in the lessons which he desires to 
make. When advancement in the studies has 
become the child's delight and his serious 
purpose and intention and pleasure, the rules 
of order that were first imposed on him ex- 



52 The Century and the School 

ternally become the objects of his own wish'. 
He identifies his individual will with the 
general law of the school, and this mental 
attitude when once attained marks an im- 
portant epoch in moral training. There is a 
subjugation of the natural self, of the desire 
to play, and of caprice, involved in the devo- 
tion to a task imposed by the school. There 
is constant self-abnegation, the substitution of 
superior aims and duties for individual 
caprice. While in this respect the school 
does not differ from any other community 
organized for the purpose of joint work, it 
certainly, as a matter of fact, is the earliest 
opportunity which the child has for this im- 
portant kind of moral training. 

The incidental virtues of school work, 
namely, the habit of application and of in- 
dustry, rank high in the agencies that shape a 
moral life. As idleness is the mother of vice, 
so industry is one of the elements of a noble 
life. For this reason school government, in 
enforcing habits of industry, not merely looks 
towards the accomplishment of the tasks of 
the day, but it builds by degrees character 
and moral personality. If the school could 
give nothing else to the child but this fixed 
habit of steady application to work and duty, 



Morality and Education 53 

this alone would constitute it a moral agency 
of much importance. 

The school exerts a moral influence through 
the resemblance which its little community 
and organization bears to the great spiritual 
institutions of man. There is, however, a 
more direct influence. Life in the school it- 
self, with its many phases, presents oppor- 
tunity for incidental yet important moral 
training. In antithesis to the old Roman say- 
ing that we should educate our children not 
for school, but for life, some modern teachers 
have replied that school does not educate for 
life, but is life. This modern idea, striking 
as it is, seems only partly true. School is 
life, but school is not all life. It is not even 
all of the child's life. It is but a fragment 
of life compared with the larger life which 
the child is leading at home, and will lead, 
after leaving school, in the social and civic 
world. School life is but a fragment com- 
pared with the life pulsating beyond its walls. 
School education as far as it goes, is life, and 
should be conducted with the observance of 
every virtue for whose display there is any 
opportunity. Love of truth, kindly honesty 
in opinion, statement and action, mutual trust, 
sympathy, good will, unselfishness, are factors 



54 The Century and the School 

for whose practice every day, every hour of 
school education give opportunity. The obli- 
gation to teach and to study these lessons is 
important for teacher and pupil alike. Moral 
lessons, like many others, can be taught much 
better objectively and by example than 
through precept. No greater gift can a kind 
Providence bestow on a young being than to 
lead it to a schoolroom where some good, 
strong man or woman, truthful, honest, can- 
did, yet sympathetic, is the soul of the lit- 
tle community. The teacher's individuality 
creates the spirit of the school, and the latter 
is chief among the agencies of moral educa- 
tion. 

While the teacher's naturally imperfect in- 
dividuality imposes a very close limit for the 
influence of his personal example, the recog- 
nition of the grave moral responsibility of his 
position, of the value of example in school 
management, constitutes a potent call on every 
conscientious teacher to strive for a healthy 
tone in his school, through his own self-con- 
trol and good aspirations. Whatever quiet 
and unobtrusive but steady moral self-im- 
provement the teacher is capable of, will tell 
on the moral condition of his room. Of all 
the agencies of ethical education there is none 



Morality and Education 55 

as potent as the moral atmosphere of the 
schoolroom, which the strong manhood or 
womanhood of the teacher can create. For 
five hours every day year after year, the child 
lives in the environment which the teacher has 
created. As far as the school is life, it should 
be true, sympathetic, cheerful and active. 
There should be a strong moral undercurrent 
which does not find expression in words, but 
in every practice. 

In the administration of discipline the 
principles mentioned before, that each child 
must respect the rights of the community, 
should be discernible in the teacher's ruling, 
blame or punishment, and the element of 
personal caprice should be kept in the back- 
ground. 

Not only respect to others, but love and 
good will are duties which should be actively 
practiced whenever there is an opportunity. 
This is the sum of all commandments, and the 
sum of all moral teaching through school life. 

The negative side of moral training in the 
schoolroom may be considered for a moment. 
Wrong makes its appearance in the school- 
room as well as elsewhere. The firm repres- 
sion of evil tendency without anger, but also 
without undue temporizing is as necessary in 



56 The Century and the School 

school government as love and sympathy. 
Certain systems of schools have at times been 
denounced for tendencies morally weakening 
because these cities have abandoned corporal 
punishment. The influence therein implied 
seems by no means clear. Corporal punish- 
ment, instead of appealing to intelligence, 
appeals to fear of pain, and constitutes the 
very lowest educational influence. It may be 
necessary to subdue brutal nature by blows. 
It may, at times, be a short cut to reach the 
obstinate perversity of spoiled children. It 
may be, in some cases, the influence to which 
children have been accustomed by home train- 
ing. But, on the other hand, we are told by 
experts that even in the animal world, the 
highest results of training are not brought 
about by beating, but by impassionate insist- 
ence and wise management. 

In the repression of the evil tendencies that 
show themselves in the schoolroom, there 
should be a certain valuation of the degree and 
the kind of wrong calling for treatment. 
Common schoolroom offenses which mischief, 
love of activity, and other causes, bring about, 
should be treated as breaches of order and 
propriety, and not as moral obliquities. Ly- 
ing, deceit, fraud, and similar offenses, how- 



Morality and Education 57 

ever, require an entirely different method, 
and the impression should be left on the mind 
of the child that these offenses are a cause of 
sorrow for child and teacher alike. Not un- 
frequently these sins are the consequences of 
conditions which the teacher might have fore- 
stalled, of temptations and environments 
which he might have removed. 

Through the regular routine of school life, 
and the observance of the incidental virtues 
which form part of every kind of life, incip- 
ient moral habits are formed, which partake 
of the character of all customs that are first 
engendered by external influences. As life 
grows, character gradually absorbs these single 
habits, and makes them part of the young 
personality. 



WHAT IS A FAD? 

THERE has been a widespread discussion in 
regard to what has been called "fads in edu- 
cation." The charge is made that public 
schools undertake to teach too much of what 
is not necessary, and thereby neglect the essen- 
tials. While all agree that fads should have 
no place in public education, there is the 
widest possible difference in regard to the 
question, "What is a fad?" A school fad 
might be defined as a persistent departure 
from educational common sense. Single er- 
rors constitute no fad. A fad is a defect 
which is systematized. It is error masking 
as achievement or progress. 

The Fad of "Superfluity" 

Some well-meaning and intelligent critics 
of the public schools charge that education 
has run mad by including many superfluities 
into its course. The so-called "newer studies" 
— namely, drawing, music, nature-study, and 
art — have to bear the brunt of these attacks. 
The writer of this paper sent a letter of in- 

58 



What is a Fad? 59 

quiry to many people. The answers have 
been used to some extent in this paper. The 
president of an association of parents and 
patrons of public schools writes: "In my 
opinion, the first school superintendent who 
rises to the occasion and has these 'fads' dis- 
continued in the public schools will win for 
himself fame beyond any other measure he 
can advocate." He explains that he refers 
to drawing and singing. 

These studies are not fads in any sense of 
the word. It is tacitly assumed in such criti- 
cisms that it is the sole function of education 
to prepare for some special business of life. 
Since only a few children will become artists 
or musicians, for the great majority who are 
not to become artists or musicians it is sup- 
posed that training in drawing and music is 
thrown away. This would be an insuperable 
objection if these studies did not impart train- 
ing of human importance and general edu- 
cational application. Education does not 
prepare for any special business or vocation, 
but for life. The cultivation of eye and hand 
and taste is of importance in all callings. The 
educational universality of these studies is 
their defense. In this age even an elementary 
education should include some of the elements 



60 The Century and the School 

of science, or the child remains in brutal 
ignorance of the world in which he lives. 
Music, in the sense of class-singing, is an ele- 
ment of public instruction that is underesti- 
mated by the thoughtless only. Drawing has 
some features of universal educational value 
in every school, and in industrial centers it 
ranks among the important studies. Manual 
training and lessons in cooking have both 
social and general educational value; their 
aim never has been to train carpenters or 
cooks. While these studies find strong advo- 
cates among the thoughtful in the community, 
and among the teachers, it is proper to remem- 
ber that they may suffer by being unduly 
magnified in a course of instruction. They 
occupy a position essentially different from 
that of reading, writing, arithmetic, history, 
and geography. They have neither found such 
universal adoption, nor have they been given 
as great a share of time, nor have they rooted 
so deeply in the approval of public conscience, 
as the older studies. Moreover, they have not 
become fully ingrafted or correlated with the 
rest of the schoolroom work. As a rule, their 
conduct lies in the hands of supervisors who 
make this specialty their whole work. In 
such case their adjustment to the claim of the 



What is a Fad? 61 

other educational work is apt, at times, to be 
neglected, and an undue amount of time and 
attention may be exacted from teachers and 
pupils. These studies are of the highest edu- 
cational value; they may become fads if they 
step beyond the limit of their general educa- 
tional usefulness. 

Fads of Eccentricity 

This class of fads may be made clearer by 
an illustration : A few years ago some person 
suggested that the daily rotation of the various 
studies in the program was objectionable, and 
that, instead of an hour in arithmetic, fol- 
lowed by an hour in geography, and perhaps 
an hour in history, a different division of time 
was preferable. Consequently, he undertook 
to teach all the arithmetic of the school term 
by taking five weeks' solid work in arithmetic 
at the rate of five hours a day. Even this idea 
had some followers. 

The words "fad," "frill," "fringe," which 
are used frequently as synonyms, apply to this 
class with particular force. The idea under- 
lying them seems to be that of fashionable 
ornament in contrast with plain dress. The 
idea of fad often carries with it the suggestion 
of personal vanity, a manifest desire to attract 



62 The Century and the School 

attention by appearance rather than by merit. 
There is a "sport" with new things which 
takes possession of its votaries and makes them 
lie in wait for things novel and strange. 

It is characteristic of this kind of fads, as 
well as of others, that they are launched into 
the world with liberal promises of the im- 
portant results which they will accomplish. 
The fad's reason for existence lies in the prom- 
ised achievement of the future rather than in 
the experience of the past or the needs of the 
present. 

Fads of Theory 

The existence of fads in modern education 
is by no means discouraging. Zeal and 
enthusiasm are in evidence in all of them. 
Not a few of them arise from the very wealth 
of educational thought and from an abun- 
dance of ingenious theory. Fads are at times 
evidences of great interest in new educational 
theories which, while not always expressed in 
terms clear and conclusive, are, for that very 
reason, for some fascinating and attractive. 
One would imagine that the hopeless entan- 
glement which stares us in the face in the dis- 
cussion of new and old education, of the new 
studies and the three R's, of prescribed courses 



What is a Fad? 63 

of study or individual plans, should be in it- 
self enough to make the teacher withdraw 
from the path leading into quagmire, and 
keep to the broader road of conservative 
teaching. But mysticism never lacks disciples. 

Much error has arisen from a mistaken idea 
of the function of the school, which I take to 
be the development of power through instruc- 
tion in the conventional studies. Public 
opinion would probably classify as a fad the 
attempt to "develop power" to the exclusion 
of reading, writing, and arithmetic. School 
education is an unfolding process. But it is 
more than the unfolding of what is in the 
child. Knowledge from without, and expe- 
rience and life from without, must be carried 
into the child-soul. 

The child is not the self-contained aim and 
orbit of education. Education comprises a 
larger world. It is not correct to say that the 
child is educated for himself; he is educated 
for manhood. He is trained, not for what he 
is, but for what he shall be. There are in him 
childish ways which must be cast off and re- 
jected in the process of education. Childish 
life and thoughts are scaffoldings which are 
discarded as he advances. Education has to 
bear constantly in mind the idea that the re- 



64 The Century and the School 

quirements and duties of adult life, the ideals 
of true manhood and womanhood, form the 
aims of child education. On the other hand, 
the ways and means, and the processes, of 
education are fixed by the natural conditions 
of child-life. The aim lies in the future; the 
means are determined by present conditions. 
Childhood is naturally the happiest time of 
life, but the incidental aim that education 
should make the child happy would be but a 
poor substitute for the greater aim, namely, 
the happiness and strength of the adult The 
educator should not, cannot without educa- 
tional hazard, step down and lose his own 
identity in his otherwise proper endeavor to 
adjust himself to the child's life and ways. 
He must stand erect and kindly lead the child 
to walk with him towards his future. He ad- 
justs himself to the child so far only as it is 
necessary to introduce him to the serious pur- 
poses of education. School education should 
be childlike in its simplicity and clearness; 
to make it childish in tone or subject-matter 
would be a fad. 

Whenever school education separates itself 
from instruction, and "development of facul- 
ties" is divorced from the pursuit of serious 
study, then the fad makes its appearance. 



What is a Fad? 65 

Among many of the great sayings of Herbart, 
none is more important than his remark: "I 
confess that I can not realize education apart 
from instruction." 

While the older methods of education had 
to be reminded constantly that "all work and 
no play makes a dull boy," there are some 
well-meaning, progressive, and vigorous 
teachers who must be told constantly that "all 
play and no work will not make a man." 

A reliable eyewitness gives the following 
account of a visit she paid to a room in a large 
school: The morning began with what is 
called an "observation lesson." The children 
were encouraged to relate what they thought 
noteworthy of their experience of the previous 
evening. One of the children related that 
they had an evening party at home, that they 
lived upstairs, and that they had carried up 
two kegs of beer ; that when they were through' 
with this they had carried up a keg of whisky. 
They had a very good time. The teacher, 
very wisely, said at this stage: "Now let us 
hear from some of the other children." (I 
beg to remind my readers that this is a report 
of an actually observed morning.) The sec- 
ond series of exercises consisted in games fash- 
ioned somewhat after the kindergarten games, 
s 



66 The Century and the School 

The next was the naming of classic pictures. 
Pictures pasted on cards (Perry pictures, if 
I am not mistaken) were held up in rapid suc- 
cession, and the class supplied the name: "The 
Pharisee," "Correggio's Madonna/' "Thor- 
waldsen's Evening," etc. The next exercise 
was one in posing, the children imitating, by 
the way they stood, certain pictures which 
they had seen. Thus one boy stepped for- 
ward, looked about for some object, took hold 
of a feather duster, and leaning on it, one end 
of it on the floor, he looked up with a set 
expression in his face. The class shouted, 
"The man with the hoe!" The next exercise 
was called "rhythmic movement." Ten chil- 
dren danced the Virginia reel and eight chil- 
dren the lancers. The next exercise, finally, 
was one in practical reading. A sentence was 
exhibited quickly, and the children then gave 
the words of the sentence. I have no doubt 
that the rest of the day, after the visitor had 
left, was given to the various traditional work 
of the schools. 

Fads of Exaggeration 

Aristotle defined virtue as a means between 
two extremes. Thus he thought that wise 
economy was a virtue, while those who prac- 



What is a Fad? 67 

ticed too much or too little economy, the miser 
and the spendthrift, represented the extremes 
of vice. In a similar way the correct educa- 
tional practice or idea is capable of abuse and 
exaggeration, and the result is a fad. A fad, 
in this sense of the word, is a practice which 
carries some valuable idea beyond reasonable 
limits and proper proportion. Thus, Pesta- 
lozzi's idea of objective teaching was a great 
step in the progress of educational science and 
practice. No lesson is more easily learned 
than when it can be taught through the eye. 
But the correct and beneficial principle of 
objective teaching may be carried to such an 
extent that it becomes a harmful practice. In 
arithmetic, for instance, the real value of the 
study lies in the power of mathematical infer- 
ence and deduction. While all arithmetic 
work begins with the use of objects, and while 
many of the new steps, even in advanced work, 
will gain by objective illustration, these must 
be discarded as soon as they have answered 
their purpose, and mathematical reasoning 
must take their place. Objective teaching, 
whether it be called by Pestalozzi's old name 
or by the more modern names of visualizing 
and aurizing, if carried to the extreme, may 
become a harmful practice. Children are 



68 The Century and the School 

thinking beings, and it is proper for the 
teacher to take it for granted that not every- 
thing must be objectified and "visualized" 
and "aurized." It was the mistake of the in- 
structor in a room visited by one of our 
teachers to try to visualize the perfectly plain 
story of the two goats who tried to cross from 
opposite directions a plank bridging a creek, 
and began to butt against each other. The 
teacher "visualized" the story by selecting two 
children to act the part of the goats. 

The great aim in all instruction in reading, 
from the primary grade to the highest, is that 
the child should see through the words and 
the forms of the printed page, and have his 
mind steadily fixed on the ideas to be con- 
veyed. The application of the idea, however, 
at present in use in some school in one of the 
large cities is by no means free from objection : 
in order to be quite sure that the children read 
words instead of ideas, all reading aloud has 
been abandoned. The children read silently, 
and show that they understand what they have 
read through oral and written recitation. 

No more legitimate demand can be made 
on the school than that of concentration, in 
the sense that there should be, as much as pos- 
sible, a connection established between the 



What is a Fad? 69 

various branches of instruction — that they 
should mutually supplement each other. But 
even this valuable idea may become an error 
if carried beyond the limit of common-sense. 
A lady reported to me the following incident: 
A teacher who prided herself on correlating 
all subjects in the school curriculum began 
her day's work with an observation lesson on 
apples. This was followed by a reading les- 
son on apples, after which the children took 
their seats and wrote about apples. Next, 
songs about apples were sung. Apples were 
then divided and used to teach fractional 
parts. As it was now time for drawing, the 
children were sent to the board to draw apples. 
Soon the board was filled with all kinds of 
apples, known and unknown to the horticul- 
turist. One boy, however, instead of drawing 
an apple drew a horse. This breach of dis- 
cipline, or violation of correlation, could not 
be passed over, so he was asked why he had 
drawn a horse instead of an apple. The boy 
replied: "Oh, I'm tired of apples, and so I 
drew a horse to eat all the apples up." 

There is some merit in the coordination of 
studies, as well as in concentration. Each 
study is, in a measure, a complement and cor- 
rective of the other. Each must stand related 



70 The Century and the School 

and subordinate to the rest. Each answers 
an educational and an objective purpose. 
Each cultivates a special kind of activity. If 
any one study is raised to inordinate impor- 
tance, or if it is deprived of the corrective 
influence of the other, harmonious education 
is endangered. Language ranks easily first 
in the common-school course, yet, if literary 
studies were exaggerated without being cor- 
rected through the touch with life, with na- 
ture or through the exactness and precision of 
mathematics, mental development would tend 
towards the verbal, the fanciful, the imagina- 
tive, and the dreamy. Literary studies, with 
their wide horizon, their possible tendency 
toward the imaginative, the diffused, and the 
indefinite, need the counterbalancing influ- 
ence of the precise terseness and close deduc- 
tion of mathematical studies. Equipoise and 
balance in the studies of the curriculum are 
needed as much as concentration. 

Origin of Fads 

Fads have presumably existed under some 
name or other since the beginning of educa- 
tion, but their growth has perhaps been more 
marked in our own days than in former times. 
A person fond of paradoxes might say that 



What is a Fad? 71 

fifty years ago the art of teaching consisted of 
matter alone, without much method. The 
learning of the data of information proceeded 
without the use of much pedagogical art. On 
the other hand, it might be said of the present 
time that in some places the art of instruction 
is all method and little matter. The data of 
information are overshadowed by the skill of 
the teacher and by illustrative and explanatory 
devices. The machinery receives more atten- 
tion than the output. The rigid course of 
study of the old school, as it existed thirty 
years ago, the regular examination of classes 
by principals and superintendents on the sub- 
ject matter of the lesson, allowed very little 
latitude for growth of educational weeds or 
fads. 

Where a certain kind of school work, de- 
fined in quantity, is prescribed and must be 
accomplished within a reasonable limit of 
time, instruction is not likely to lose its 
concentration and force. While there are 
grave objections to a hard and fast course of 
study extending to every detail, it may, never- 
theless, be said in favor of the old course of 
study that it was a safeguard against fads and 
whims. 



72 The Century and the School 

Fads of Routine and Tradition 

The teacher of the present day is not wholly 
responsible for the superfluities in modern 
instruction. Some of them have been be- 
queathed to him by the past. Some of the 
studies of the curriculum are burdened with 
topics and subdivided subjects which answer 
neither any specific educational purpose nor 
any demand of life. In one of the best mono- 
graphs published during the current year on 
the essentials of mathematical teaching the 
author shows how the peculiar mercantile con- 
ditions of the Middle Ages, when the study of 
arithmetic first came into use, and when the 
earliest text-books were written, led to the in- 
sertion of certain topics in arithmetic which 
were then useful, but for which, with the 
changes in modern life, every necessity has 
passed away. These topics have survived in 
text-books for the sole reason that they were 
part and parcel of former books in arithmetic. 

Public-Opinion Fads 

Public opinion has not infrequently abused 
the term "fad" and branded with it almost 
every progressive movement in education. 
When I asked a prominent teacher, "What is 



What is a Fad? 73 

a fad?" he answered promptly: " Anything is 
called a fad which is done in a way different 
from that in which somebody was taught when 
he was a child." 

Perhaps the most dangerous fads are not 
of the teacher's creation, but originate in the 
community itself. The many fads which 
must be put to the account of teacher and 
superintendent are sad enough, but they do 
not begin to be as pernicious and long-lasting 
as the harm that may be done when a strong 
and masterful man with a hobby gets into a 
leading position on a school board, and drives 
his fellow-members before him in the narrow 
path of his special fad. 

The people are collectively honest, and their 
verdict is wise. Opinions of classes and in- 
dividuals, however, no matter how loudly or 
emphatically expressed, are at times unwise. 
The history of past decades has seen the rise 
of many, and the decline of some, of the fads 
of this origin. There is, for instance, the fad- 
dish idea that a laborer needs no education, 
that workmen are spoiled by too much school- 
ing; there is the "three R" fad; there is the 
"education makes criminals" fad. 

The claim that spelling should receive a 
proper amount of attention, and is an impor- 



74 The Century and the School 

tant part of public school training, is valid. 
If the demand is made, however, that to this 
study an undue amount of time and attention 
be given, even spelling may become a fad. 
Drill in spelling is a mechanical device, and 
in the poorest imaginable school mechanical 
drill is always most prominent. 

The "quick promotion" fad has done im- 
measurable harm. Children, against the wish 
and view of their teacher, have, in places, 
been forced into higher grades than the one 
for which they were fit, and their educational 
progress has been impaired and ruined there- 
by. The teacher and principal who in such 
cases quietly and pleasantly, but at the same 
time firmly, stands his ground is a blessing to 
the child and to the parent. One cannot help 
thinking in this connection more leniently of 
Rousseau's paradox: "The aim of education 
is not to gain time, but to lose it." 

One of the worst fads of our day is the 
"extreme indulgence" fad. The practice is 
bad which lets the child have his way when 
he is unreasonable, and lets him regulate his 
relations to school and home in accordance 
with his pleasure instead of in accordance with 
clear duties. "I wish you would make him 
come to time," said a kind mother to a teacher 



What is a Fad? 75 

who had sent for her on account of the fre- 
quent tardiness of the child; "but the fact is, 
I cannot make him get up in the morning, and 
he will not go to bed when it is time." If the 
parent abdicates the educational control of 
his child, he makes a pernicious error and 
indulges in a common, but objectionable, fad. 
The child must be taught to be faithful to his 
little duties as soon as his power in any direc- 
tion is adequate to this educational demand. 

Conclusion 

Many of the idiosyncrasies and petty errors 
may be avoided by dwelling on the universal 
principles of education and by subjecting all 
innovations to the test of universality. The 
schools are common schools. No practice or 
study which is serviceable for specific walks 
of life alone can find, legitimately, a place in 
public education. 

The good sense of the American people, 
and of American teachers, has thrown enough 
safeguards around the public schools to pre- 
vent fads and petty errors from becoming 
universal. The task of the school is to con- 
centrate its efforts on the recognized subjects 
of instruction. Growth must proceed through 
the acquisition of information. Progress does 



76 The Century and the School 

not lie in the increase of studies, not in the 
excess of data, but in the definiteness of ideas, 
the logical grouping of facts, the clearness of 
insight, and the gradual strengthening of judg- 
ment. When new studies or practices are in- 
troduced for educational reasons, the teacher 
must be ready to account for the same to pub- 
lic opinion. The aim of education is not 
merely to prepare for life, nor is it merely to 
develop power. Each of these aims, taken 
separately, leads to error and fad. Their 
joint and universal consideration constitutes 
harmonious education. 



TEACHERS' DUTIES 

THE old saying of the Roman, "The wel- 
fare of the people is the first law," expresses 
a principle which is the foundation stone of 
our national institutions. With a slight change 
it might well serve as the motto for all that 
appertains to schools and their management. 
"The welfare of the child shall be the highest 
law" is the principle on which every school 
should be conducted. To it all other consid- 
erations must yield precedence. The merit 
or demerit of every educational institution or 
measure must be judged by reference to it. 
The whole educational apparatus which the 
modern state has created, — school laws, school- 
houses, teachers and school officials, exists to 
serve this purpose and no other. It is a prin- 
ciple of universal validity, and applies not 
only to the general policy of education, but 
also to the daily routine of school business. 

For the teacher in particular the principle, 
"The child's welfare shall be the highest 
law," is of supreme importance and valid rules 

77 



78 The Century and the School 

for his or her professional conduct might be 
based on it. 

The right of the teacher to control and dis- 
cipline the pupils in her room is a delegated 
one. Her authority is derived from the fact 
that she stands in the parents' place. The 
assumption of parental rights by the teacher 
cannot be separated from obligations which 
resemble those of the parent. Kindness to 
and sympathy with her pupils are qualifica- 
tions just as necessary in a teacher as the 
ability to impart instruction. The teacher's 
sympathy with children need not find its prin- 
cipal expression in words, but in actions, not 
in smiles and terms of endearment, but in 
untiring patience, in steady temper, and in a 
kindliness of disposition, which makes the 
very presence of the teacher an ennobling edu- 
cational influence. Not merely the teacher's 
face and manner, but the spirit and atmos- 
phere of the school, not the moment but the 
years, must be the tests of her sympathy with 
struggling childhood. 

Little children are at times mischievous and 
naughty, and it may be proper and even 
obligatory at times to enforce respect to law 
by strict disciplinary measures; yet there 
should be sympathy even in punishment, lest 



Teachers' Duties 79 

it fail of its purpose and arouse passions in 
the child-soul which had better forever be 
dormant. 

There are unlovable children, seemingly 
irresponsive to word and act of kindness, 
with whom it may be difficult to remain in 
sympathetic touch. But for all that, the 
teacher who does not love childhood, in spite 
of its mischief and naughtiness, its apparent 
slowness or dulness in lessons, who does not 
enjoy in a measure even the vagaries of child- 
hood, has erred in choosing her vocation. 
The presence of a nagging, scolding, mo- 
rose, fault-finding or habitually discontented 
teacher or principal is a calamity to a school 
and a misfortune to a school system. 

The Duty of Self -Improvement 

Never-resting energy and industry in school- 
room work and personal professional pro- 
gressiveness are duties which the teacher owes 
to her pupils. The school-time of many 
children is limited to two or three years, 
and every moment of their time should be 
utilized to the best advantage. Constant self- 
improvement and growth on the part of the 
teacher are, therefore, conditions of profes- 
sional excellence. The regular reading of 



80 The Century and the School 

some progressive educational magazine, and 
good educational and general literature, the 
use of the public library, a fair participation 
in educational meetings, utilization of what- 
ever opportunities for literary, scientific, es- 
thetic or ethical culture the city or place offers, 
are obligations which the profession tacitly 
requires from every conscientious teacher. 
The least educational fitness which child- 
hood can demand is that its teacher should 
be a live man or woman. The personal 
equation is of special importance in teaching 
where much of the influence exerted over the 
child is by example rather than precept. 
Strong manhood or womanhood is required 
to make a good teacher. 

In regard to instruction, the duty is to 
secure for the lessons the most potent educa- 
tional influence on the development of char- 
acter and mental power. It goes without 
saying that the facts of the lessons must be 
remembered by the child, and he must be 
helped in this by sufficient, if not abundant 
drill and practice, made attractive by the 
teacher's ingenuity and resourcefulness. An 
efficient teacher will see that the lesson 1st 
not a "re-citation," a term derived from a 
past age, when the work of instruction con- 



Teachers' Duties 81 

sisted in assigning pages in a text-book, and 
requiring that the words should be com- 
mitted and "re-cited." A lesson should not 
be a mere re-citation on the part of the child; 
it should rather be a thoughtful statement of 
the contents, than the recital or repetition of 
an authors words. Here the true teacher 
can train every power of observation, thought 
and experience by seeing that the lesson is 
not mechanically learned, but intellectually 
mastered, not formally recited, but substan- 
tially re-stated. The teacher's skill makes 
the operation of learning a process of the 
most universal training of sense and soul. 

The child is to become a law-abiding and 
order-loving citizen, and the schoolroom 
gives him the first training in communal life 
with his equals. He learns to obey law, to 
respect the rights of others, and to regulate 
his conduct by altruistic considerations. It 
is therefore one of the teacher's duties to 
manage the room of which she has charge 
in such a way that good will, law and order 
prevail. The pupil must learn to so adjust 
his conduct as to afford the other children the 
best opportunity for their work, through his 
silence, his application to duty and obedience 
to direction. Rational and complete control 
6 



82 The Century and the School 

of her room is one of the requirements in the 
teacher's calling without which successful 
instruction is impossible, and which is an 
elementary and indispensable condition of 
efficiency. 

The teacher's authority has its source in 
that of the parent. As she respects her own 
position she will respect that of the child's 
father and mother, and whatever she can do 
to increase the child's appreciation of par- 
ental care and guidance will help her to 
maintain her own authority. 

There is no relation in the whole range of 
social life where the pre-supposition and 
need of cooperation is more natural and more 
imperative than in the case of the parent and 
teacher. Both make the welfare of the child 
their highest law. Their own reputation and 
well-being in life is largely dependent on the 
success of the education of the child, which 
is their common care. It is gratifying to 
know that in every schoolroom in the land 
willing cooperation between parent and 
teacher is the rule, and the opposite the ex- 
ception. The work of education is carried 
on jointly and simultaneously in family and 
in school, and this makes the cooperation of 
parent and teacher not a matter of choice, 



Teachers' Duties 83 

but a necessity. School is not a substitute 
for, but the complement of family education ; 
the fact that a child has attained school age 
does not relieve the parent of his educational 
duties; it simply means that henceforth the 
teacher will assume charge of a delegated' 
and well-defined part of the child's training. 
That a teacher should assist the parent in his 
educational efforts, and, in turn, the parent 
the teacher, are well established educational 
maxims; without such mutual support either 
side of the educational work may become 
unnecessarily difficult, or even unfruitful. 
It is clearly one of the professional duties of 
the teacher to strive to win the good will of 
the parent, and to remain in harmony and 
friendly touch with the pupil's home. 
Teacher and parent impair their educational 
efforts by failing to remain in sympathetic 
touch with each other. 

While cooperation between school and 
home is desirable, no unnecessary demand 
for assistance should be made upon the latter, 
and the legitimate share of the work must 
be borne by the teacher without worrying 
and nagging the parent with constant com- 
plaints about petty matters which belong to 
the legitimate duties of the school, and which 



84 The Century and the School 

a competent teacher should be able to set 
right without troubling others unnecessarily 
for assistance. As a rule, there are few mat- 
ters in the school with which a self-reliant 
teacher cannot deal without having recourse 
to other powers. 

There is no parent who will not appreciate 
the fruitful efforts of a teacher in behalf of 
a child. A teacher who understands how to 
make her room popular, not by granting un- 
warranted requests in favor of one child 
which would be unjust to others, but by good 
schoolroom work, by devotion to the chil- 
dren, and good nature in dealing with par- 
ents, renders a service to the whole great 
system of schools and the cause of public 
education. 

An even temper, patience and courtesy in 
the intercourse with the parent, especially 
when disagreeable messages happen to be 
received from a child's home, are just as 
much professional duties of the teacher as 
patience with the children themselves. It is 
rare that a business-like, kindly worded reply, 
consisting of a polite explanation of the cir- 
cumstances which the teacher wishes to place 
before the parent, and which wisely and en- 
tirely omits the element of, perhaps, justifiable 



Teachers' Duties 85 

personal resentment, will be received in any 
but a courteous and appreciative way: "A soft 
answer turneth away wrath." No teacher 
should forget that a parent's life is as full of 
trials as her own, and that the experience with 
a troublesome child is as likely to be irritating 
at home as it is in school. 

Every teacher owes to the system of public 
schools, of which she is one of the representa- 
tives, full loyalty and unswerving support. 
Unless she believes fully in public education 
and its high mission she cannot conscientiously 
hold her position. There can be no better 
incentive for her than to feel that the welfare 
of the whole community, aye, of our whole 
system of government, depends upon the free 
and liberal education of the masses in schools 
which makes them intelligent citizens and 
good men and women. A firm belief in the 
power of the public school system for good, 
and unswerving loyalty to it in every way, is 
an inseparable condition of a teacher's effi- 
ciency. 

Belief in the public schools as a system 
involves the willing acceptance of the condi- 
tions on which it rests, namely, willing and 
helpful cooperation with other persons em- 
ployed in the same work. Each teacher must 



86 The Century and the School 

subordinate herself to the grander purpose 
and adjust her individuality to efficient service 
with fellow-teachers and a multitude of co- 
workers. Where masses devote their lives to 
joint labor for a common purpose, subordina- 
tion, self-discipline and active loyalty become 
essential duties. Without this there can be 
no concentration of efforts, no wise husbanding 
of means, no control, no unity of purpose, no 
efficient maintenance of education on a large 
scale. These considerations open a new line 
of duties besides those which the teacher owes 
to the child and his parent, namely, full, 
active, and willing cooperation with fellow- 
teachers, principals and school boards, and 
loyal obedience to school laws and constituted 
authority. 

One of the qualifications required of the 
public school teacher is her fitness for coopera- 
tive work. This means the ability to get along 
pleasantly with fellow-teachers, with prin- 
cipal, parent and school officials, and to labor 
in close and helpful harmony with them. 
Good will should be the rule and practice, not 
only toward the children and the principal, 
but towards the teachers of other rooms, — a 
certain loyal and friendly readiness to recog- 
nize the work which the children have done 



Teachers' Duties 87 

with other teachers. For instance, to intimate 
in any form to a child coming from another 
school that he has been poorly taught, is bad 
professional taste. It may be a fact, but 
nothing is gained by complaint and belittling 
in the child's eye his past educational effort 
or the efforts of his former teacher. 

There is no worse piece of folly than that 
of which instances, fortunately rare, are found 
in many places from the primary room to the 
university, than the fatuous complaints about 
the alleged poor instruction which the chil- 
dren have found in the grades below their 
present one. Sometimes a university com- 
plains about the derelictions and inadequacies 
of high school instruction; the high school 
about the grammar schools, and in the latter 
room No. 1 complains about No. 2, and so 
down to the primary room, which, perhaps, 
is so fortunately placed that it has a kinder- 
garten preceding it, about whose derelictions 
it can complain. The very fact that this kind 
of complaint is so general renders it doubt- 
ful whether it usually arises from preceding 
inefficient work, as may sometimes be the case, 
or from discovering, as we are all apt to do at 
every stage of instruction, that our pupils are 
not perfect, and that no course of instruction 



88 The Century and the School 

ends in the pupil's complete mastery of all that 
has been taught. It is a professional obliga- 
tion of every teacher to speak with due con- 
sideration, if not respect, of the work of 
predecessors, and much bitterness of feeling 
and lack of cooperation may be avoided 
thereby. 

The loyalty which the teacher owes to the 
school should find expression in her relation 
to the principal, who represents the authority 
of the board. She owes him friendly sup- 
port. The title of the office which she holds 
is that of assistant teacher. It is her duty to 
be of assistance to the principal, not only in 
name, but in fact. Her office is not that of 
the critic, but of the helper. She must try to 
understand and further the principal's plans 
and methods for improving the school, and 
enter upon their spirit willingly and intelli- 
gently. The support which she gives to him 
is a measure of her professional strength and 
value. She must be ready to share in the 
general duties, and the clerical and record 
work of the school. She can help the prin- 
cipal by being self-reliant in her own sphere 
of work; she should not overburden his time 
by referring matters to him which she may as 
well attend to herself. Any legitimate order 



Teachers' Duties 89 

given by the principal should not only be car- 
ried out, as a matter of course, but carried out 
willingly and intelligently, and in a spirit of 
helpfulness. 

Any teacher has the right to a frank discus- 
sion with the principal of the affairs of the 
school, as far as they concern her, but she has 
also the duty of evincing her interest in a 
friendly spirit. A strong teacher can help the 
general work even in her conversation with 
other teachers. The professional reputation 
of the principal should be dear to all, because 
the standing of the school in the community 
and the strength of his authority with pupils 
and parents depend on it. 

There is no more important office in the 
whole school organization than that of the 
principal, for it is based on the idea that in 
the principal is vested the highest local author- 
ity in school matters. The great authority 
given to the principal in most of our towns 
and cities is connected with duties corre- 
spondingly great. 

The popularity of the school should be one 
of the great aims of every principal. If the 
school is looked upon with favor by the peo- 
ple of his district, he helps the cause; his own 
work and that of the teachers will be more 



90 The Century and the School 

successful ; the control of the children will be 
made easy, for the popularity of a school 
means the hearty cooperation of the parents 
with the measures adopted for its conduct. 
The patrons believe in the principal and they 
are ready to believe in what he does. It means 
the very desirable active support of the sys- 
tem of public schools by the citizens in the 
district. 

Every principal can help the board of edu- 
cation by trying to make his school a favorite 
with the people, which is the natural position 
for any public school to occupy. Our people 
believe in public education and cherish it. 
Where a school is not popular, the probable 
reason is usually some mistake of omission or 
commission in its management. 

The best and most direct way to make 
a school popular is to make it efficient in 
instruction and discipline. Efforts in this 
direction are sure to find their reward in pub- 
lic appreciation. If, in addition to this, the 
principal makes good use of those oppor- 
tunities of forming the acquaintance of the 
citizens of his district, which his daily voca- 
tion offers, and thus keeps in friendly touch 
with the people; if he makes it the rule of his 
own and the teachers' management to culti- 



Teachers' Duties 91 

vate, studiously and systematically, pleasant 
relations with parents, it will certainly lead to 
that kind of popularity which is desirable. 
By his treatment of parents the principal can 
make friends not only for himself, but for 
the public school system of the city. It is 
neither necessary nor possible for him to 
comply with every demand that is made upon 
him, but even a refusal can be put in such a 
form that it appeals to the good will of the 
petitioner. Every parent must be made to 
feel absolutely sure of a courteous and respect- 
ful hearing when he calls at a public school, 
and even an angry parent should be received 
with good-natured patience and forbearance. 
Every visitor should leave with the impression 
that the school is officered by serious-minded 
men and women, who have the interest of the 
children at heart. 

Principals and teachers should make it their 
aim to please the parents. This does not at all 
mean that the principal should allow his 
school to become lax in discipline, or that he 
should be irresolute in dealing with refractory 
pupils, or should be accommodating and time- 
serving when unreasonable demands are made 
on him; politic weakness is sure to result in 
loss of public confidence and respect. A w T eak 



92 The Century and the School 

man or woman cannot be an efficient prin- 
cipal. No American community wishes that 
bad boys should grow up uncorrected. What 
is required of the principal is strict attention 
to his business, a certain kindliness of dispo- 
sition towards children and parents, and the 
manifest wish to satisfy just demands. 

The amount of routine business, which the 
principal of a large school is called upon to 
attend to in the course of a day, is exceedingly 
laborious. Correspondence, calls from par- 
ents and children, messages and queries from 
teachers, constitute a great drain on time and 
attention. Yet it would be a great error for a 
principal to lose himself in this mass of detail, 
which, after all, is of secondary importance 
compared with the great duty of being the 
leader and guide of the teachers and children. 
To distinguish well between what is impor- 
tant and what is unimportant in his duties is 
a test of a principal's good judgment. He 
makes a mistake if he allows himself to spend 
too much time on business routine, to the 
detriment and neglect of the educational work, 
and fails to give to the latter the greater share 
of his attention. Even as far as instruction is 
concerned there is much routine work which 
is of secondary importance, and must not be 



Teachers' Duties 93 

allowed to engross the principal's attention 
too much. Thus the marking and re-marking 
of examination papers, collected from various 
rooms, the devising of new and improved 
kinds of records, and like matters, relatively 
important as they may be, are of much less 
consequence than his presence in the school- 
rooms, the direct supervision of instruction 
and discipline, wise and timely suggestions of 
improvement, and the assumption of ever- 
active intellectual leadership of his teachers. 

Participation in the same work may be 
made a source of mutual improvement for 
principals and teachers, if they are willing to 
profit by the opportunity. Every principal 
must educate his corps of teachers, and it may 
be said, without fear of contradiction, that he 
in turn is educated by them through the work 
and methods he observes in their rooms. The 
ideal principal will get fully as much instruc- 
tion from his teachers as they obtain from him. 

The principal holds his office by appoint- 
ment of the school authorities; but this 
appointment is ultimately based on the sup- 
position of superior scholarly attainments, 
pedagogical skill and executive ability. These 
qualities should be just as much in permanent 
evidence as conditions on which the princi- 



94 The Century and the School 

pal's authority rests, as his annual re-appoint- 
ment. The principal's authority, in a higher 
sense, can be maintained best by constant 
self-improvement, reading, and study; with- 
out these, scholarly qualifications soon become 
obsolete. 

In these days of marked and rapid advance 
in the philosophy of education, in child-study, 
and in practical methods, it is not enough 
for a principal to possess the routine efficiency 
and the successful experience derived from 
many years of practice in managing schools. 
In qualifications confined to routine ability 
there is not a sufficient element of progress. 
There is good teaching done elsewhere and 
the child has a right to demand that his 
leader, on whom his education depends, 
should be informed of the most efficient prac- 
tices and best thoughts current in educational 
literature and life. He should be able, when 
occasion arises, to give good pedagogical rea- 
sons for his practical methods and directions, 
more valid than "I think so" or "this is the 
way in which I think it ought to be done." 
Constant professional growth is even more 
necessary for the principal than for the 
teacher, because it is proper that the officer 
should keep in advance of his soldiers. The 



Teachers' Duties 95 

principal must keep in touch with the living, 
spiritual progress of the age, and above all 
other things he should be well-informed as a 
student of educational matters in theory and 
practice. Official authority supported by 
personal qualifications constitutes the most 
efficient kind of leadership, and will always 
find responsive following. The example of 
the principal counts for much in the practice 
of the teachers. His ways of dealing with 
children and parent will be more or less 
imitated in the rooms of his school. The 
daily acts of a wise, kind, and firm manager 
of children are a more powerful influence in 
training and guiding teachers than mere 
directions or command. 

There are more qualifications required to 
fill the principal's office than scholarly and 
practical ability. No other position requires 
strong manhood and womanhood to a greater 
degree. Every teacher should find the sup- 
port of her principal a tower of strength in 
dealing with refractory pupils or unreason- 
able parents. There must be moral courage, 
and the readiness to incur the responsibilities 
which the position imposes. Without the 
principal's moral courage, and his unhesita- 
ting determination to stand by his teachers in 



96 The Century and the School 

enforcing just laws and rules of order, ojir 
schools would deteriorate in a direction that 
is even more important than instruction, 
namely, in the training of character, and they 
would fail in their task of educating law- 
abiding and order-loving citizens. 

The principal is not only the teacher's guide, 
but as a rule he is required to be the judge of 
their qualifications. He does not court this 
power, it is assigned to him as a duty; it is 
always a responsible, and often a disagreeable 
one. He is answerable for the condition of 
his school, and, for this reason, he is required 
to report on the efficiency of the corps. It is 
his duty to speak to a teacher frankly when he 
discovers errors in her instruction or manage- 
ment, and to make suggestions whenever he 
sees that they are in the interest of the chil- 
dren. There must be unhesitating readiness 
on the part of the principal in attending to 
this sometimes unpleasant task. 

This task need not be, and will not be, 
unpleasant, unless principal or teacher makes 
it so; the former by inconsiderate manner in 
making a criticism, and the latter by unbusi- 
nesslike sensitiveness when receiving it. It 
is in the interest of the children that the 
teacher should encourage the frankness of 



Teachers' Duties 97 

these criticisms by receiving them in a kind 
and appreciative spirit. In many of the best 
schools the principal, when he passes through 
the rooms, has usually a brief and pleasant 
conversation with the teacher, in the hearing 
of the children, about some point of the work 
that is going on. He asks questions and 
makes suggestions, if there is occasion, and 
the teacher replies just as pleasantly. The 
frankest mutual confidence prevails. The 
impression left on the children is not that of 
fault-finding, but of cordial official coopera- 
tion and good will existing between principal 
and teacher. It is a great mistake ever to 
make criticism the outcome of a fit of anger or 
passion. Criticisms are part of a principal's 
official business, and must not be made an 
indignity by the way in which they are given 
or received. There is one thing which is 
better than criticism, namely, appreciation of 
the good points of a teacher's work and a 
frank conversation and discussion of the rea- 
sons why a practice that seems doubtful should 
or should not be followed. By such friendly 
discussions both will be the gainers. 

Candor is just as much a principal's duty in 
making criticisms as courtesy in language and 
manner. No principal will believe that he 
7 



98 The Century and the School 

has a right to criticise a teacher in the hearing 
of her class in any manner that would lower 
her in the eyes of the children or lessen her 
authority. The professional reputation and 
standing of the teacher must be as dear to him 
as his own. He may have to reverse her judg- 
ment in case of discipline, but even in such 
fortunately very rare cases, he must have the 
greatest consideration for her standing with 
pupil and parent. 

The principal's obligation to be frank in 
making a criticism has been dwelt upon at 
length because of its importance to the school, 
when there is occasion for it. Generally speak- 
ing, criticism of a teacher's work is an excep- 
tion, not the rule. When a corps of teachers 
has been with a principal for years, it need not 
be of frequent occurrence. Constant criticism 
is always a mistake. When the work is car- 
ried on successfully and efficiently, as it is in 
most of the classrooms, there is no occasion 
for interfering with it. Captious criticism is 
mischievous, because it makes the teacher feel 
ill at ease when the principal is present, and 
utterly destroys her self-confidence. 

While the principal is the absolute judge 
of all arrangements in his school, there is no 
need of having the whole work conducted on 



Teachers' Duties 99 

the dead level of uniformity. To deprive 
teachers of the freedom of movement means 
to deprive them of self-confidence, and to sap 
individuality, which is the main source of 
vigorous and progressive teaching. 

Where the principal is in touch with his 
corps of teachers and there is constant inter- 
change of opinion about plans and methods, 
a harmonious understanding will prevail with- 
out much criticism. Meddlesomeness on the 
part of the principal is as bad as the oversen- 
sitiveness or vanity on the part of the teacher 
who is hurt by legitimate criticism. 

If the preceding discussion has served any 
purpose, it must have shown that the teachers' 
duties are exceedingly numerous, and that 
there is no one who can possibly attain perfec- 
tion in all directions of professional work. 
There is no teacher living who does not fall 
short of perfection in some way, and who is 
not, in certain directions, less efficient than in 
others. But with all the consciousness of the 
imperfection inherent in human nature, there 
is no higher duty for the teacher than to strive 
unremittingly to approach perfection in the 
sacred task of guiding and educating the future 
generations on whose integrity and intelligence 
depends the future welfare of our country. 



EDUCATIONAL IDEAS IN DICK- 
ENS' NOVELS 

HANS MAKART attempted in one of his 
paintings to express the general idea that per- 
vades the works of Raphael. His painting 
shows a group of but three persons. There 
is the portrait of Raphael himself, pencil in 
hand, his eye intently fixed on the face and 
form of a young mother, who draws with 
gentle hand the veil from the face of her 
beautiful child who is slumbering in the 
cradle. 

It is not difficult to understand the sym- 
bolism of Makart's group. The central idea 
of Raphael's art is to unveil to the world 
the divine in motherhood and childhood. 
Through the hand of the artist the genius 
within proclaims to the world without the 
divine mystery revealed in that human rela- 
tionship. Raphael's work is the apotheosis 
of motherhood and childhood; it is this theme 
which shines from his greatest paintings. 

The unveiling of the divine in things hu- 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 101 

man was the object of Dickens' novelistic 
art. He differs in this essentially from the 
other great novel writers of his age. His 
aim was not to introduce the reader to the 
circles of high life, and to open to him in 
story drawing-room doors closed to him in 
reality; his aim was not to revive the romantic 
age of knight and crusader; it was not to pro- 
pose psychological puzzles and to unravel 
them in finely woven plots of fiction. No; 
his eye dwelt with never-fading interest on 
the events of commonplace life and every- 
day characters. Not the heights but the 
depths of human existence formed the theme 
of his art. The warehouse, the counting- 
room, the street and the gutter supply him 
with heroes, with godlike men and women 
whose noble qualities ray out all the more 
strongly for the dark background of folly, 
sin and vice against which their images are 
thrown. The great novelist shows a tendency 
toward grotesqueness and exaggeration in 
drawing characters and relating events; but 
even this strong bias cannot diminish in the 
reader the feelings of reverence and sympathy 
when he sees divine traits appear in the 
thoughts and actions of the humblest and low- 
liest of men. The sensation of the ludicrous, 



102 The Century and the School 

for instance, which the broadly grotesque 
farce of the adventures of Mr. Pickwick 
arouses in the reader, is more and more over- 
shadowed by the powerful pathos of the hero's 
actions. The divine element appears when 
the hero forgets insult and injury and lifts 
up his downtrodden foe, poor Jingle, from 
misery and hopeless despair, concealing his 
benevolence from others with anxious care. 
Strong human foibles and absurdities become 
amiable weaknesses in a life consisting of the 
unpretending exercise of good will toward 
all. The hero's life ennobles his surround- 
ings. The grotesque is forgotten when in it 
a grandly noble soul unfolds itself. Neither 
Job Trotter nor Sam Weller can be justly 
accused of sentimentalism or hyperbole, but 
even they see distinctly the divine element 
appear in the grotesque character whom they 
admire. When Mr. Pickwick had helped 
Job's master in his darkest hour, he had 
touched the soul of the scamp in the one 
unselfish sentiment which it contained: in his 
devotion to his master and friend. Speaking 
of Mr. Pickwick, Job says: " 'I could serve 
that gentleman till I fell down dead at his 
feet.' 

" ( No one serves him but I,' answered Sam'. 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 103 

'I never heard, mind you, nor read of in story 
books, nor see in picters, any angel in tights 
and gaiters — not even in spectacles as I re- 
member, though that may ha' been done for 
anythin' I know to the contrairey — but mark 
my words, Job Trotter, he's a regular thor- 
oughbred angel for all that; and let me see 
the man as wentures to tell me he knows a 
better vun.' " 

The grand theme of Dickens, the unveiling 
of the divine in the lowliest forms of human 
life, can be traced in many if not all of his 
writings. In Oliver Twist, in the Old Curi- 
osity Shop, in Bleak House, in Barnaby 
Rudge, it is shown that even an atmosphere 
of corruption, sin and crime, cannot always 
stifle the divine essence of the human soul. 

He turned to the delineation of childhood 
in novel after novel with ever new delight. 
It was suffering, abused, downtrodden child- 
hood, however, which had a fascination for 
him. It was there that he could show best 
that man might grow into a true image of 
the divine in spite of circumstances of misery 
and poverty, of corrupt surroundings, of 
stinted, misguided, or tyrannical education. 
There are pictures of child-life, of educational 
folly or wisdom in nearly every one of his 



104 The Century and the School 

great novels, and it is ever the tender and lov- 
ing task of our author to reveal the divine in 
the child-soul, and to show that innate nobil- 
ity dwells in the humblest and lowliest of the 
little world. Oliver Twist, brought up in 
corruption and crime, trained to be a thief, 
keeps his soul unsullied. Paul Dombey, 
brought up in selfishness, never knowing the 
loving care of a mother, remains a sweet and 
iloving child. Strong manhood grows into 
being in cases where there is a total absence 
of formfal education. Sam Weller, in his 
humble station, is a sharp-witted, intelligent, 
and honest lad; but — what was his education? 
Here is his father's account of it, with Sam's 
commentary : 

" 'Wery glad to hear it, sir,' replied the old 
man; 'I took a good deal of pains with his 
education, sir; let him run in the streets when 
he was very young and shift for his self. It's 
the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.' 

" 'Rather a dangerous process, I should 
imagine,' said Mr. Pickwick, with a smile. 

" 'And not a very sure one neither,' added 
Mr. Weller jr." 

While Dickens has delineated child-life 
more fully and more frequently than any other 
novelist, yet we should in vain look for a 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 105 

theory of education or for positive educational 
principles. He is negative in the literary 
means which he employs, and uses exaggera- 
tion, caricature, irony and satire everywhere. 
Educational shams and follies are his subjects, 
not ideals of education. Happy child-life, 
good schools and good teachers have no place 
in his works. They lie outside of the self- 
appointed task of our novelist. He intended 
to correct sins of education and to remedy 
social evils by the force of strongly overdrawn 
description, which was sure to move, if not 
shock, public sentiment. He never tells how 
education should proceed, but gives numerous 
examples of ways in which children should 
not be brought up. Yet, from his negative 
statements, from the follies and crimes which 
he scourges, we may infer the educational plan 
which he considers good and wise. Notwith- 
standing this tendency to exaggeration in his 
descriptions, there is a sufficiently close re- 
semblance to reality to let the caricature at 
once suggest the image from which it is 
drawn. When Dickens described, in Nich- 
olas Nickleby, the revolting scenes of Dothe- 
boys Hall, a number of Yorkshire school- 
masters took offense and threatened the author 
with personal vengeance, each of them claim- 



io6 The Century and the School 

ing that Squeers was intended for his own 
portrait. 

Dickens looked upon childhood with tender 
sympathy, and it had a peculiar attraction for 
him!. It left him the widest scope for the 
employment of his favorite literary means, 
humor and pathos. There is hardly any of 
his works without some child-character or 
some thoughts on education. In some novels, 
as in Oliver Twist, he makes the child the 
principal person in the book. In Dombey & 
Son Paul is the real hero; and when he passes 
away the interest dies out. The fascination 
of helpless, trustful, simple, artless childhood 
is so strong that Dickens tried to perpetuate 
these qualities, in some of the lives which he 
describes, beyond the limits of childhood. 
This led him to create some unique characters, 
in which he tries how the attributes of child- 
hood will fit the adult hero or heroine of the 
novel. Little Dorrit shows the delicate sweet- 
ness and simplicity of the child blended with 
the strong character of womanhood. 

While other artists see the sublime in what 
is strong and grand, Dickens finds it in the 
small, insignificant and lowly. He turns 
constantly to the early days of his heroes, and 
tells us of their suffering and training in the 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 107 

school of sorrows and the sorrows of the 
school. 

It is astonishing to see how many sharply 
drawn child-characters Dickens has given to 
literature. There is the early novel of Nich- 
olas Nickleby, in which the Yorkshire schools, 
Squeers, the schoolmaster, his family, and his 
teacher appear; there are the Snawley chil- 
dren, poor Smike, and the little Kenwigises. 
There are little Paul and Florence in Dombey 
& Son. The story of little Pip and Estella 
is told in Great Expectations, where the per- 
verted training of the sentiments is the theme. 
In Little Dorrit quite a number of educa- 
tional incidents are related; there is not only 
the early life of Amy, but the stern school in 
which Clennam grew up, the hard task of 
Mrs. General when she tried to train irrev- 
erent, rebellious Fannie in social refinement. 
In the Old Curiosity Shop little Nell, Kit, 
and other child-characters are prominent. In 
Hard Times a whole system of education is 
placed before the reader, when he follows the 
author to Gradgrind's school, and learns his 
educational ideas in regard to the bringing up 
of his children, Louisa and Tom, and his 
ward, Sissy Jupes. In the Pickwick Papers 
we get occasional glimpses at the early train- 



io8 The Century and the School 

ing of inimitable Sam Weller. In Bleak 
House one of the most pathetic of Dickens' 
child-characters stands before us: poor 
Joe. Oliver Twist discloses scenes of youth- 
ful depravity in the Artful Dodger and 
his companions. David Copperfield is in 
a measure the embodiment of Dickens' own 
life. 

With such a variety of child-figures and 
educational episodes, it is not an easy task to 
seek some general idea which appears in them 
all and binds all these heterogeneous images 
together. The general educational theme in 
Dickens' novels might perhaps thus be stated : 
Through the night of neglect and brutal treat- 
ment of childhood, through the clouds of 
parental cruelty and folly, shine the eternal 
stars placed by God in the young heart: the 
child's thirst for kindness and love, his grati- 
tude for benefits, his forgiveness of injury. 
No suffering, no degree of neglect can destroy 
these; neither sham education nor perverted 
training can warp them and prevent their 
spontaneous growth. This theme rings out 
in an endless variety of harmonies from the 
novels of Dickens. He makes the noblest 
native qualities of the child-soul shine all the 
more brightly by the contrast in which he 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 109 

places them with foolish and cruel modes of 
education. 

It is a strange coincidence that of all Eng- 
lish literary men, he should write most on edu- 
cation who, in a scholastic sense, had least of 
it. Dickens had received less schooling than 
any other great English author of our time. 
His learning came from the genius within 
rather than from the schools without. His 
own childhood had been full of neglect and 
sorrow. There were periods in his own life 
as a boy to which he would never allow any 
reference in later years. He would never 
refer, for instance, to his days in the ware- 
house, described as Murdstone's and Grinby's 
in David Copperfield. He lived in London 
most of his life, but he would never, as long 
as the old landmarks stood, pass through the 
street which reminded him of that period. 

Dickens may emphatically be called the 
novelist of London life. Most of the scenes 
of his work are located there. His delineation 
of childhood, too, is largely taken from Lon- 
don life. The waif of the street, the victim 
of parental neglect, the orphan remitted to 
the tender care of the stranger, the selfish util- 
ization of child-labor, the perversion of edu- 
cation by making its aim the realization of 



no The Century and the School 

some pet scheme of the parent; these and other 
educational themes are the favorite subjects 
of Dickens. No more pathetic description of 
the child of the gutter and of the ideal side of 
this pitiful life can be found than in poor Joe, 
of Bleak House. Desertion, squalor, poverty, 
hunger and misery cannot altogether destroy 
the waif's better self; there is in him an in- 
stinctive knowledge of right and wrong, the 
noble feelings of gratefulness and attachment, 
and recognition and love of the good in others. 
Here is the scene at the inquest over that ob- 
scure copyist, Nemo, with whom the fate of 
proud Lady Deadlock seems to be bound up 
in such a mysterious way: 

"Says the coroner: 'Is that boy here?' Says 
the coroner: 'Go and fetch him. . . . Oh, 
here is the boy, gentlemen.' 

"Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very 
ragged. Now, boy — but stop a minute. Cau- 
tion. This boy must be put through a few 
preliminary paces. 

"Name? Joe. Nothing else that he 
knows on. Don't know that everybody has 
two names. Never heard such a thing. Don't 
know that Joe is short for a longer name. 
Thinks it is long enough for him. He don't 
find no fault with it. Spell it? No. He 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels in 

can't spell it. No father, no mother, no 
friends. Never has been to school. What's 
home? Knows a broom's a broom; and knows 
it is wicked to tell a lie. Don't recollect who 
told him about the broom or about the lie. 
But knows both. Can't exactly say what will 
be done to him after he's dead, if he tells a lie 
to the gentlemen here. But believes it will 
be something very bad, to punish him and 
serve him right, and so he'll tell the truth. 

" 'This won't do, gentlemen,' says the cor- 
oner, with a melancholy shake of the head. . . . 
"While the coroner buttons his greatcoat, 
Mr. Tulkinghorn and he give private audi- 
ence to the rejected witness in a corner. That 
graceless creature knows that the dead man 
. . . was sometimes hooted and pursued about 
the streets. That one cold winter night when 
he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near 
his crossing the man turned to look at him and 
came back, and having questioned him, and 
found that he had not a friend in the world, 
said : 'Neither have I — not one,' and gave him 
the price of a supper and a night's lodging. 
That the man had often spoken to him since, 
and asked him whether he slept sound at 
night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and 
whether he ever wished to die, and similar 



ii2 The Century and the School 

strange questions. That when the man had 
no money, he would say in passing: 'I am as 
poor as you today, Joe;' but that when he had 
any he had always (as the boy most heartily 
believed) been glad to give him some. 

" 'He was very good to me/ said the boy, 
wiping his eye with his wretched sleeve. 
When I see him a-laying so stretched out just 
now, I wish he could have heard me tell him 
so. He was very good to me, he was.' " 

The deep sympathy which our author ever 
manifests for the sufferings and sorrows of 
mankind, explains the extreme bitterness with 
which he speaks of the tormentors of child- 
hood — selfish parents, tyrannical teachers and 
bad schools. It is the one subject of which 
he never tires. Hence the long line of the 
Creakles, the Squeerses, the Blimbers, the 
Pipchins, the Wopsles, and others. His com- 
mand of details in depicting the wretchedness 
of these educational monstrosities seems to be 
endless, but he is sparing in the praise of the 
few good schools which he describes. We tire 
of his constant abuse of educational plans, of 
schools and schoolmasters, and try to find 
what kind of education he approves. But 
where our author praises he seems soon ex- 
hausted. We hear much about Dotheboys 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 113 

Hall, about Dr. Blimber and Mr. Creakle; 
we find a very vivid description of every detail 
of Mr. McChoakumchild's teaching; but 
when we turn to Dr. Strong's noble school, a 
very brief and very general description is all 
that is given. 

Copperfield-Dickens describes it thus : 
"I got a little better of my uneasiness when 
I went to school the next day, and a good deal 
better the next day, and so shook it off by de- 
grees that in less than a fortnight I was quite 
at home, and happy among my young com- 
panions. I was awkward enough in their 
games, and backward enough in their studies; 
but custom would improve me in the first 
respect, I hoped, and hard work in the second. 
Accordingly I went to work very hard, both 
in play and in earnest, and gained great com- 
mendation. And, in a very little while, the 
Murdstone and Grinby life became so strange 
to me that I hardly believed in it, while my 
present life grew so familiar that I seemed to 
have been leading it a long time. 

"Dr. Strong's was an excellent school; as 
different from Mr. Creakle's as good is from 
evil. It was very gravely and decorously 
ordered, and on a sound system, with an ap- 
peal, in everything, to the honor and good 
8 



H4 The Century and the School 

faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to 
rely on their possession of those qualities, un- 
less they proved themselves unworthy of it, 
which worked wonders. We all felt that we 
had a part in the management of the place, 
and in sustaining its character and dignity. 
Hence we soon became warmly attached to it. 
I am sure I did for one, and I never knew, in 
all my time, of any other boy being otherwise, 
and learned with a good will, desiring to do 
it credit." 

There is, perhaps, some reason for the fact 
that Dickens paints parents and teachers so 
often in the darkest colors. The memory of 
the miseries of his own childhood was stronger 
than the recollection of its joys. He himself 
had been a poor, neglected child. The liter- 
ary master-mind of the age had never received 
a literary education. When little Charles 
was nine years old, his father, who had held 
a small government office, became involved in 
financial difficulties, which landed him in the 
debtors' prison, the Marshalsea. The boy 
had to shift for himself. Copperfield's life 
in the warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby is 
a fairly correct account of Dickens' boyhood 
during those years. Mr. Micawber and Mr. 
Dorrit, the father of the Marshalsea, are re- 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 115 

flections caught from the lights and shadows 
of the personality of Dickens' father. His 
another is perhaps depicted in Mrs. Nickleby. 

Our novelist had but to recall his own neg- 
lected child-life and then to contemplate the 
suddenness with which his life, after the ap- 
pearance of his first great novels, passed into 
the sunshine of fame and wealth, to derive 
from this reflection the lesson which he reiter- 
ates so constantly: The innate power of the 
soul will triumph over neglected and per- 
verted education, and break through the bar 
of circumstance into the sunlight of a noble 
life. 

Let us now look at the educational content 
of some of his best novels. In his earliest 
great work, the Pickwick Papers, the educa- 
tional theme is touched on incidentally only. 
If Sam Weller is in a sense the hero of the 
story, he illustrates the rough training which 
the life in a large city may give to a naturally 
well-disposed boy, and shows the qualities 
which are likely to be developed — shrewdness, 
sharpness of wit and resource, readiness of 
speech, extreme self-reliance verging on ir- 
reverence; and yet, with all these, good will 
towards others. 

In Oliver Twist, the second great novel, the 



iiS The Century and the School 

educational theme is not only an incident, but 
it predominates. The novel is an account of 
the checkered career of a poor orphan boy, 
whose mother had died at his birth, among 
strangers. The infant had been turned over 
to the workhouse. "He was enveloped in the 
old calico robes, which had grown yellow in 
the same service; he was badged and ticketed, 
and fell into his place at once, a parish child — 
the orphan of a workhouse — the humble, half- 
starved drudge — to be cuffed and buffeted 
through the world — despised by all, and 
pitied by none." At the age of nine he is 
summoned before the workhouse board, and 
a kind of practical business education is 
mapped out for him): 

" Well, you have come here to be educated, 
and taught a useful trade/ said the red-faced 
gentleman in the high chair. 

" ( So you'll begin to pick oakum tomorrow 
morning at six o'clock,' added the surly one 
in the white waistcoat. 

"For the combination of both these bless- 
ings in the one simple process of picking 
oakum, Oliver bowed low by the direction of 
the beadle." 

After a short time Oliver is "let out" to 
some master, is badly treated, and runs away. 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 117 

In London he falls in with a young thief, and 
is taken by him to Fagin, the head of the 
gang, who takes much pains to educate Oliver 
for the same occupation. There is really a 
kind of technical training in robbery in the 
house of the master-thief. After breakfast 
the young rogues are required to practice on 
Fagin, who walks about the room with his 
pockets stuffed with handkerchiefs, snuff- 
boxes, pocketbooks, and the like; and the 
game is to take these things from him with 
such light-fingered skill that the watchful eye 
of the old thief does not perceive the loss. 
Oliver's education through the surroundings 
of this wretched place seconds this direct evil 
training. He lives among depraved men and 
women, from the thief down to the murderer. 
Yet, in spite of this education for crime, by 
design and surroundings, the purer instincts 
of the child's soul triumph. He turns away 
from the first dark deed in which he is to take 
part, and finds good people who make his wel- 
fare their care. 

The lesson of Oliver Twist seems to be that 
even perverted education cannot crush the 
divine instinct. 

The next great work from the pen of Dick- 
ens was Nicholas Nickleby. In it the educa- 



ii8 The Century and the School 

tional theme again predominates. It was 
written with the avowed intention of dealing 
a crushing blow at the outrages of the York- 
shire boarding-schools. While Nicholas and 
Ralph Nickleby are the heroes of the book, 
the center of interest is the school of Dothe- 
boys Hall. The lesson of the novel seems 
clear: The ethical and sacred relation of love 
between parent and child is an essential, indis- 
pensable element in all education; it must be 
reflected in the sympathy between teacher and 
pupil. Without love and sympathy there can 
be no education; hom>e becomes a place of 
torture, and school, a jail. 

In Squeers' school sympathy has no place; 
and yet the disgusting brutality of the master 
reflects but the depravity of the parent who 
removed from the circle of the home the 
child that nature had deformed or neglected. 
Squeers' school is the inferno of childhood, 
the place without hope or joy. There can be 
no stronger presentation of the principle that 
education without love or sympathy is deprav- 
ing and brutalizes both educator and child; 
it is worse than even the total absence of 
schooling. There are schools which do not 
educate, but ruin. 

In the Old Curiosity Shop the educational 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 119 

theme is continued. Here it is shown how 
love may in itself become an education. The 
folly of the old gambler wrecks his own fate 
as well as that of little Nell, for whom he 
attempts to gamble together a fortune. Yet 
the tender love with which he clings to her 
and the deep attachment of the child to him 
makes her soul grow into an ethical beauty 
round which the author weaves his most pa- 
thetic story. Child-heroism is crowned with 
unfading glory. "This child," he thought, 
"has this child heroically persevered under 
all doubts and dangers, struggled with poverty 
and suffering, upheld and sustained by strong 
affection and the consciousness of rectitude 
alone! And yet the world is full of such 
heroism. Have I yet to learn that the hardest 
and best-borne trials are those which are 
never chronicled in any earthly record and 
are suffered every day! And should I be 
surprised to hear the story of this child?" 

Great Expectations, one of the later novels, 
might here be mentioned because of the 
special kind of perverted education that forms 
its subject : the perverted education of the sen- 
timents. The power which education may 
exercise in rousing and deadening the feelings 
of the heart is illustrated in the lives of Estella 



I20 The Century and the School 

and Pip. Estella is an adopted child; her 
benefactress, Miss Havisham, had been de- 
serted, on the day that was to see her married, 
by the man she loved. Since that terrible 
hour she had spent a lifetime in the seclusion 
of her rooms, still dressed in the white robe 
which she wore on the fatal day. Her heart 
was broken, her mind affected. She adopts 
and brings up Estella to be devoid of all sen- 
timent. Estella grows into a most beautiful 
woman ; true to her training, she marries with- 
out love. But instead of leading a life free 
from sorrow — because in consequence of her 
education she was not supposed to possess 
a heart capable of suffering — she lives in 
wretchedness at the side of a contemptible 
being until his death frees her. 

Pip, a village boy who had been called to 
the lonesome Havisham mansion several times 
to play with Estella, has an educational career 
of a different sort. He is an orphan who is 
being brought up by his sister, the wife of the 
village blacksmith, Joe. "Mrs. Joe," says 
little Pip, speaking of his sister, "was a very 
clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art 
of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable 
than dirt itself." She did her duty by her 
young brother, as far as feeding and clothing 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 121 

him were concerned, but she did not love him. 
She did not seem to have much affection for 
anyone. Pip says: "I was always treated as 
if I had insisted on being born in opposition 
to the dictates of reason, religion and moral- 
ity, and against the dissuading argument of 
my best friends." 

In this respect Pip's training was similar 
to that of Estella's. In her case, there was the 
training of hatred and scorn; in the other case, 
there was the absence of natural affection. 
Pip himself gives us an idea how this school- 
ing without love or sympathy affected him: 

"My sister's bringing-up had made me sen- 
sitive. In the little world in which children 
have their existence, whosoever brings them 
up, there is nothing so finely perceived and 
so finely felt as injustice. It may be only 
small injustice that a child can be exposed to, 
but the child is small, and its world is small, 
and his rocking-horse stands as many hands 
high, according to scale, as the big-boned Irish 
hunter. Within myself I had sustained from 
my babyhood a perpetual conflict with in- 
justice. I had known from the time that I 
could speak that my sister in her capricious 
and violent coercion was unjust to me. I had 
cherished a profound conviction that her 



122 The Century and the School 

bringing me up by hand gave her no right to 
bring me up by jerks." 

While Pip's education seemed to lack the 
essential elements of sympathy at home, yet 
he did not grow up without schooling. Mrs. 
Joe sent him to the village teacher, Mrs. 
Wopsle, whose name Dickens' caricature has 
made im'mortal. "Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt 
kept an evening school in the village; that is 
to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of 
limited means and unlimited infirmity, who 
used to go to sleep from six to seven every 
evening, in the society of youth who paid two- 
pence per week for the improving opportu- 
nity of seeing her do it." Yet, after all, Pip 
made some progress. 

a Much of my unassisted self, and more by 
the help of Biddy than of Mr. Wopsle's great- 
aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if 
it had been a bramble-bush; getting consider- 
ably worried and scratched by every letter. 
After that I fell among those thieves, the nine 
figures, who seemed every evening to do some- 
thing new to disguise themselves and baffle 
recognition. But at last I began in a purblind, 
groping way to read, write and cipher on the 
very smallest scale." 

While little Pip did not obtain much of an 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 123 

education from his sister, Mrs. Joe, nor from 
his teacher, Mrs. Wopsle, he received the 
highest training from one more ignorant than 
himself — from dear, clumsy, illiterate Joe, 
the village blacksmith, the giant with the 
heart of a child. By him he was taught les- 
sons more important than any schooling in 
letters: forbearance, good will, and love. "I 
loved Joe — perhaps for no better reason in 
those early days than because the dear fellow 
let me love him." 

Not unfrequently, when the storms of Mrs. 
Joe's temper drove big Joe and little Pip from 
house and home, the two fellow-sufferers 
would sit together and talk their sorrows, and 
the noble soul of the simple blacksmith would 
unwittingly teach golden ethical truths to the 
listening child, never-forgotten lessons which 
helped to form his life. Here is how Joe ex- 
plains the untiring patience with which he 
bears his wife's outbreaks of temper: 

" 'And last of all, Pip — and this I want to 
say very serous to you, old chap — I see so much 
in my poor mother, of a woman drudging and 
slaving and breaking her honest heart, and 
never getting no peace in her mortal days, that 
I am dead afeard of going wrong in the way 
of not doing what's right by a woman, and I'd 



124 The Century and the School 

fur rather of the two go wrong t'other way, 
and be a little ill-convenienced myself.' 

"Young as I was, I believe that I dated a 
new admiration of Joe from that night. We 
were equals afterwards, as we had been be- 
fore ; but afterwards at quiet times when I sat 
looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had 
a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was 
looking up to Joe in my heart." 

In the novel Hard Times there is a new 
variation of the favorite educational theme of 
Dickens. Here it is not meanness, nor lack 
of sympathy, that causes wealthy Mr. Grad- 
grind, the factory owner and school com- 
mitteeman, to espouse a pernicious system of 
education and to sacrifice his little ones to the 
Moloch of a theory. While in the works 
which we have so far considered, under-edu- 
cation, educational neglect and perverted edu- 
cation are represented, the story of Hard 
Times illustrates how even a well-meaning 
effort and an honestly conducted school may 
defeat the objects of education when they are 
made subservient to a vicious theory. Here 
the school "system" becomes the enemy of 
education. Instead of making the "system" 
serve the child, the child is sacrificed to the 
"system." True, he is educated for life, as 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 125 

the phrase is : not for his own life, but some- 
body else's. The aim is not so much to make 
him strong, good and happy, but to fit him for 
some place in shop or factory. Mr. Grad- 
grind's educational system sounds strangely 
familiar to us. We have heard it reiterated 
as the most recent educational wisdom by 
generations of his successors: "Schools must 
be practical. They must not teach anything 
that is not of practical value. Only what is 
directly useful. Nothing but what has a 
price in the labor market. We want no senti- 
ments, no romance about education." 

It never dawned upon Gradgrind's soul, 
until misery and suffering had brought it 
home to him, that education moist do its work 
for the soul within rather than for the world 
without, and that the most practical education 
is one which makes every good germ grow 
into fruition. 

Gradgrind, however, to begin with, thought 
that matter-of-fact knowledge and sharp intel- 
ligence were all that school training should 
aim at, and in consequence lays down the fol- 
lowing course of study for the teacher of his 
school: 

"Now, what I want is facts. Teach these 
boys and girls nothing but facts. Plant noth- 



126 The Century and the School 

ing else; root out everything else. You can 
only form the minds of reasoning animals 
upon facts. Nothing else will ever be of any 
service to them. This is the principle on 
which I bring up my own children, and this 
is the principle on which I bring up these 
children. Stick to the facts, sir." 
• Mr. Gradgrind, though mistaken in his 
theory, was an honest, well-meaning man. He 
did not advocate to limit public education to 
the three R's, while he sent his own children 
to the best college. He acted in accordance 
with his belief: the education which he 
thought best for the public was good enough 
for himself. He sent his own children, 
Louisa and Tom, to Mr. McChoakum- 
child's school to be filled with facts and 
nothing else. No training of the sentiments 
for him! No cultivation of gentle fantasy 
and happy imagination! Nothing but prac- 
tical facts! 

In Mr. Gradgrind's model school Sissy 
Jupes, the child of a traveling circus per- 
former, had found admission by accident. 
Her father, whom she had loved tenderly, 
deserted her, and Mr. Gradgrind was moved 
to receive the little orphan into his own 
family. It was through Sissy Jupes and her 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 127 

loving nature that Louisa, who had been 
brought up on facts, was saved from the 
destructive consequences of Mr. Gradgrind's 
educational theory. The rich inner life of 
the strange child, its affectionate nature, its 
strong and sound sentiment, worked a reform 
in the selfish tendencies of Louisa, and led her 
to realize that while her mind had been filled 
with facts, her heart had remained void. 
" 'You have been so careful of me,' " Louisa 
tells her father, " 'that I never had a child's 
heart. You have trained me so well that I 
never dreamed a child's dream. You have 
dealt so wisely with me, father, that I never 
had a child's fear.' 

"Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his 
success, and by this testimony of it. 'My dear 
Louisa,' said he, 'you abundantly repay my 
care. Kiss me, my dear girl.' " 

How poor little Sissy Jupes, the orphan, 
longing for tenderness and sympathy, the 
bright child full of rich imaginative life, 
fared in Mr. McChoakumchild's school, can 
easily be conceived. Even the most decisive 
statistics which Mr. McChoakumchild, in 
the spirit of his philosophy placed before her, 
could not convince poor Sissy that she was a 
happy child. Here is her account of her 



128 The Century and the School 

mental difficulties at school as she relates them 
to her friend, Miss Louisa: 

"He said, 'Now this schoolroom is a nation, 
and in this nation there are fifty millions of 
money. Isn't this a prosperous nation? And 
are not you in a thriving state?' 

" 'What did you say?' asked Louisa. 

" 'Miss Louisa, I said I did not know. I 
thought I could not know whether it was a 
prosperous nation or not, and whether I was 
in a thriving state or not, unless I knew who 
got the money and whether any of it was 
mine. But that had nothing to do with it. 
It was not in the figures at all,' said Sissy, 
wiping her eyes. 

" 'That was a great mistake of yours,' ob- 
served Louisa. 

" 'Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it now. Then 
Mr. McChoakumchild said he would try me 
again. And he said this schoolroom was 
'an immense town; in it there are a million of 
inhabitants, and only five- and- twenty are 
starved to death in the streets in the course of 
a year. What is your remark on that propor- 
tion?' And my remark was — for I could not 
think of a better one — that I thought it 
must be just as hard upon those who were 
starved, whether the others were a million, or 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 129 

a million million. And that was wrong too.' " 
The results of Gradgrind's system of edu- 
cation could have been anticipated. In his 
son Tom it engendered the worst features of 
selfishness and deceit; his wretched life repre- 
sents a downward course from facts to dis- 
grace and sin. Louisa's life, too, was made 
miserable through her training, but the love 
and womanly strength of Sissy Jupes saves her 
from ruin. 

For Mr. Gradgrind himself a time of ad- 
versity arrives; and in the downfall of his 
hopes, in the dark hour of disappointment, 
when his daughter's love, and that feeling of 
deep sympathy for which there had been no 
place in his "system," become the solace of his 
wounded soul, he realizes and confesses to 
himself the error of his former views: " 'Some 
persons hold,' he pursued, still hesitating, 'that 
there is a wisdom of the head, and that 
there is a wisdom of the heart. I have not 
supposed so; but, as I have said, I mistrust 
myself now. I have supposed the head to be 
all-sufficient. It may not be all-sufficient.' " 
While in Hard Times education falls a 
victim to the "system," in Dombey & Son the 
child is sacrificed to the pride of the parent. 
Little Paul, so loving, so honest, so true, is one 
9 



130 The Century and the School 

of the sweetest of the novelist's child-char- 
acters. He had all that his father's money 
could buy — yet there was no mother's love. 
He had all the education that he wanted — in. 
fact, he had more than he wanted; the poor 
fellow died from over-education. 

Little Paul Dombey was the victim of a 
perverted educational aim. While Tom and 
Louisa Gradgrind were educated for the glory 
of the "system," he was educated for Dombey 
& Son, for the glory of the firm. The selfish 
pride of the father never thought of poor Paul 
as a weak, ailing child; never troubled him- 
self about the needs of his being and his hap- 
piness ; the boy was to him simply the future 
representative of the great house, Dombey & 
Son. To this his wife had died a victim; to 
this Paul was to be sacrificed. "Some phil- 
osophers tell us that selfishness is at the root 
of our best loves and affections. Mr. Dom- 
bey's young child was, from the beginning, 
so distinctly important to him as part of his 
own greatness, or (which is the same thing), 
of the greatness of Dombey & Son, that there 
is no doubt his parental affection might have 
been easily traced (like many a goodly super- 
structure of fair fame), to a very low founda- 
tion." 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 13 11 

Little Paul, old beyond his years, feeble 
and frail in body, strong only in his affection 
for dear Floy, his sister, was placed by his 
father in Mrs. Pipchin's famous institution, 
"an infantine boarding-house of a very select 
description." Mr. Dickens gives us a brief 
sketch of the methods of teaching used in this 
place: "At about noon Mrs. Pipchin presided 
over some early readings. It being a part of 
Mrs. Pipchin's system not to encourage a 
child's mind to develop and expand itself like 
a young flower, but to open it by force like an 
oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually 
of a violent and stunning character: the hero 
— a naughty boy — seldom, in the mildest 
catastrophe, being finished off by anything 
less than a lion or a bear." 

After Paul had been with Mrs. Pipchin for 
a while, it occurred to Mr. Dombey that it 
was time to require of his boy a still higher 
effort in behalf of Dombey & Son. "Mr. 
Dombey withdrew to the hotel and his din- 
ner: resolved that Paul, now that he was get- 
ting so old and well, should begin a vigorous 
course of education forthwith, to qualify him- 
self for the position in which he was to shine; 
that Dr. Blimber should take him in hand 
immediately. 



132 The Century and the School 

"Whenever a young gentleman was taken 
in hand by Dr. Blimber, he might consider 
himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The 
Doctor undertook the charge of ten young 
gentlemen, but he had always ready a supply 
of learning for a hundred, on the lowest esti- 
mate, and it was at once the business and the 
delight of his life to gorge the unhappy ten 
with it. 

"In fact, Dr. Blimber's establishment was 
a great hot-house in which there was a forcing 
apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys 
blew before their time. Mental green pease 
were produced at Christmas and intellectual 
asparagus all the year round. Mathematical 
gooseberries (very sour ones, too) were com- 
mon at untimely seasons and from mere 
sprouts of bushes, under Dr. Blimber's culti- 
vation. Every description of Greek and 
Latin vegetables were got off the driest twigs 
of boys under the frostiest circumstances. Na- 
ture was of no consequence at all. No matter 
what a young gentlem'an was intended to bear, 
Dr. Blimber made him bear to pattern, some- 
how or other." 

The satire of these lines fits our days as well 
as those of Dickens. Children are made too 
much to "bear to pattern." There is not suf- 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 133 

ficient heed given to "what they are intended 
to bear." It is all right as far as bright, vig- 
orous and strong children are concerned. 
There the high-pressure systems of education 
may stimulate and lead to the unfolding of 
the best strength. But woe to the weak child, 
which is driven to efforts beyond his strength 
and whose life is made unhappy by demands 
of parent, or teacher, which he has not the 
power to meet. Unhappy is the lot of the 
child whose education is meted out to him, 
not in accordance with what he is able to do, 
but in accordance with what the parents or 
teacher desires him to do, who is educated, 
not for himself, but for Dombey & Son. 

The results of Dr. Blimber's high-grade 
school were universally admired. When the 
examiners summed up the examinations passed 
by these pupils with ease, it seemed a pity that 
the per cent system of recognizing merit was 
limited to one hundred. While this was the 
general verdict, yet there were a few very rare 
cases in which nature seemed ungrateful to 
the "system." There were instances in which 
this vigorous training killed the mind, and 
instances in which it killed the body. Paul 
Dombey was an illustration of the latter effect, 
young Toots of the former. 



134 The Century and the School 

"This was all pleasant and ingenious, but 
the system of forcing was attended with its 
usual disadvantages. There was not the right 
taste about the premature productions, and 
they did not keep well. Moreover, one young 
gentleman with a swollen nose and an exces- 
sively large head, the oldest of the ten, who 
had 'gone through' everything, suddenly left 
off blowing one day, and remained in the 
establishment, a mere stalk. And people did 
say that the Doctor had rather overdone it 
with young Toots, and that when he began to 
have whiskers he left off having brains." 

If we leave our author here, it is not for the 
reason that our topic — the study of educa- 
tional thoughts in Dickens — is exhausted. 
Comparatively few points of the many which 
invited discussion have been touched upon. 
Bleak House, for instance, is rich in educa- 
tional lessons. There is the telescopic phil- 
anthropy of Mrs. Jellyby, who had a tender 
heart for sufferings far away, but none for her 
own neglected children. The trouble with 
her charity was that it did not begin at home. 
She planned how to educate the natives of 
"Borrioboola Gha, on the left bank of the 
Niger," but allowed her own little ones to 
grow up like savages. There is in the same 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 135 

novel an account of the growth of Esther's 
grand soul, whose presence ennobled every 
life with which this child of neglect came into 
contact. In David Copperfield also there 
are many educational threads which might be 
woven together; the education of David Cop- 
perfield himself, of Traddles and Steerforth; 
the schools of Creakle and of Dr. Strong. 

In conclusion, let us attempt to sum up once 
more, in positive form, the views which Dick- 
ens seems to express. His own mode of pre- 
sentation is necessarily a negative one because 
it was his task to show what ought not to be 
done in education; what teachers and schools 
ought not to be, rather than to illustrate 
directly what should be done. But from the 
very wrongs which he scourges we may infer 
the rights and principles which he calls upon 
parents and teachers to vindicate. 

His novels are an earnest appeal to let edu- 
cation concentrate its efforts to build up an 
ethical world in the child. The training of 
character should ever be the highest aim, and 
the schooling of the intellect should be made 
subservient to it. The superiority of general 
human culture that considers all the facul- 
ties, heart as well as hand, over mere mind 
training, is a theme which modern education 



136 The Century and the School 

should never forget. It needs to be reminded 
of it constantly by public opinion. 

Pie lays stress on the training of the senti- 
ments, which is omitted at times. Even mod- 
ern books on the science of education lose sight 
of this factor when they give the current and 
faulty definition of education as being the 
training of body, will and intelligence. We 
are so used to this definition that we do not 
realize its defect. It omits the factor on 
which Dickens lays so much stress — the culti- 
vation of the heart and its emotions. No one 
will deny the importance of this factor. To 
illustrate : It would be of little value to teach 
history if such lessons appealed to intelligence 
only, and included nothing but the mere data 
and facts of history. Instruction in history 
has a far greater task to perform : the cultiva- 
tion of patriotism and of the feeling of rever- 
ence for the grand human qualities of our 
national heroes. 

Dickens emphasizes also the child's claim 
to a happy life, not marred by demanding 
from him efforts beyond his power, neither in 
respect to lessons, nor in respect to conduct. 
He demands from every educator the recogni- 
tion of the principle that "nature is of some 
consequence." Life is an echo of the child's 



Educational Ideas in Dickens' Novels 137 

education. No forced acquirement can ever 
form a substitute for a lacking spirit of kind- 
liness and good-will toward others. These 
ethical qualities the treatment of the child by 
his educator m'ay rouse or stifle. 

The novelist enters a protest against over- 
education, under-education, perverted educa- 
tional aims, and educational shams. Child- 
nature will not prosper unless the faculties 
dormant in it are allowed to grow in the sun- 
shine of genial teaching and loving compan- 
ionship. His body does not need the food of 
nature more urgently than his heart needs the 
food of the soul : the love of friends, the sym- 
pathy of his teachers. 

One of the dangers of which the novelist 
reminds us is that of over-education, of "Blim- 
berism," so to speak. Over-education does 
not consist merely in excessive number of 
studies, but more particularly in the attempt 
to force upon the yielding mind of the child 
that training which neither his nature, tastes, 
nor future needs warrant. Education should 
not be made a forcing, but a helping process, 
through which a richer unfolding of the best 
human qualities is brought about. 

The aim of education, so again Dickens 
teaches, does not lie outside of the child but 



138 The Century and the School 

within. He is not to be educated "for Dom- 
bey & Son," nor to attest the value of some 
"system," nor to become a living proof of the 
excellence of Mr. Gradgrind's plans. He 
should be educated for himself, for his own 
sake, that he may become the best and happiest 
being into which his individuality can be 
developed. The key-note in all that Dickens 
has written about education is that even in 
the lowliest child slumbers the divine fire of 
truth and love, of devotion and enthusiasm, 
which the gentle breath of a parent's or teach- 
er's love may fan into flame. If this be true, 
we may place over the lowliest schoolroom 
and the humblest educational task the words 
of Heraclitus: "Enter. Here, too, are the 
gods." 



A VISIT TO GERMAN SCHOOLS 

After an agreeable ocean voyage we ar- 
rived in Antwerp. A day's ride across Bel- 
gium brought our party, late in the evening, 
to the historic city of Cologne on the Rhine, 
the metropolis of western Prussia. 

Early in the morning the merry sound of a 
bugle and the echoing tread of marching 
soldiers brought us to the window to look at a 
body of dragoons marching by, looking splen- 
did in the vigor of youth and in their new uni- 
forms of white broadcloth. It was a reminder 
that we were in the land of the soldier. A 
remark once made by Lord Brougham has 
often been quoted. He said: "Let the soldier 
be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this 
age. There is another person less imposing 
in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. 
The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to 
him armed with his primer, against the soldier 
in full military array." 

Germany evidently desires to make assur- 
ance doubly sure, by trusting her national 
security to her soldiers as well as to her school- 

139 



140 The Century and the School 

masters. The foreign visitor cannot help 
noticing that, in not a few German towns, the 
most striking modern buildings are the bar- 
racks and the schools. 

Gymnastics 

In the schools for the training of boys mili- 
tary vigor is not lost sight of. There is no 
city school without obligatory gymnastic in- 
struction for both boys and girls or without 
a special gymnasium large, airy and well 
equipped with apparatus. Gymnastic exer- 
cise occupies the same place on the program 
as arithmetic or reading and one can see some 
classes drilling in the yard or gymnasium al- 
most every hour of the day. The effect of 
such training is visible in the erect and trained 
step of the young people in the streets. No 
new schoolhouse is erected in any city with- 
out playground surrounding it sufficient to 
afford ample room for free physical exercise 
to the whole school simultaneously. The 
regular teachers are qualified to impart 
gymnastic instruction by special training in 
the state normal school. 

Preponderance of Male Teachers 

It should be remembered that men do most 
of the teaching in all the grades of the com- 



Visit to German Schools 141' 

mon schools of Germany. The proportion 
of men teachers to women teachers in Prussia 
in 1 89 1 was 70,000 to 8,000 or nine to one. In 
the United States the proportion is one to two, 
or in other words about 112.000 men teachers 
to 250,000 women. 

Religion in the Public Schools 

The grand Gothic Cathedral of Cologne 
with its noble architectural outlines, its won- 
derful sculptures in ornament and statues, had 
impressed us deeply when we arrived. Now 
its powerful organ and a volume of voices 
that swelled in choral music was equally 
inviting to worshiper and sight-seer from a 
distant land. To the stranger it seemed re- 
markable that the great majority of worshipers 
should be men; but perhaps this was owing 
to the fact that Cologne is a fortress with an 
immense garrison, of which a large part at- 
tends worship. 

Another fact presented itself to consider- 
ation which seemed worthy of a place in the 
memorandum book of a visiting educator. 
Cologne is a Roman Catholic city and most 
of her people are Catholics. The Protestant 
and Catholic religions in Germany, it may be 
said in a general way, are largely distributed 



142 The Century and the School 

by districts and provinces. There are many 
provinces and cities in Germany in which the 
people in a very great majority are Protestant 
and but a small number are Catholic, and the 
opposite is true of other provinces or districts. 
The denominations are less intimately mixed 
than in the populations of our large cities. 
This circumstance explains the feasibility of 
the provision made in Germany for religious 
instruction. Religion is taught in every pub- 
lic school in the German empire. The Bible 
is read, selections are explained, biblical his- 
tory is studied and hymns used in public wor- 
ship are committed to memory. Hence almost 
every large German city has public schools 
that are Catholic and public schools that are 
Protestant. Religious instruction is, as a rule, 
imparted by the regular teacher of the room. 
Religion occupies a place in the program like 
any other study. 

Plentiful Educational Opportunities 

The provisions made for the education of 
German youths are plentiful. Theodore 
Parker said fifty years ago: "In this country 
every one gets a mouthful of education, but 
scarcely any one a full meal." If this was a 
true description of educational appliances at 



Visit to German Schools 143 

that time it certainly no longer applies to the 
present day, when every boy or girl gets as 
much educational food as he has an appetite 
or a stomach for, and, at times, perhaps a little 
more. In Germany the educational table is 
exceedingly well supplied and the children, 
especially in schools of higher order, are per- 
haps a little overfed with mental pabulum. 

There is compulsory education, by which 
a boy is kept in school not only to his four- 
teenth year, but is furthermore constrained, 
after leaving the public school, to continue in 
what is called "common school extension" for 
three years longer. The sessions of these 
common school extensions (F or tbil dungs- 
schulen) take place, of course, in the evenings. 
Even without these compulsory laws, there 
would be the widest dissemination of knowl- 
edge because the Germans thoroughly believe 
in the importance of education. No visitor 
can fail to notice the high appreciation in 
which public schools are held by the people. 
They appreciate their influence, but, on the 
other hand, they do not make the mistake to 
expect too much of the school. They realize 
that school work should have the support of 
good family training. Beecher gave a very 
good statement of the powers and the limita- 



144 The Century and the School 

tions of school training. He said: "We know 
that the gifts which men have do not come 
from the schools. If a man is a plain literal 
factual man, you can make a great deal more 
of him in his own line by education than with- 
out education, just as you can make a great 
deal more of a potato if you cultivate it than 
if you do not: but no cultivation in this world 
will ever make an apple out of a potato." 

Classification of Schools 
A classification of the public schools in the 
United States could be made both brief and 
plain. Not so in Germany. There are so 
many kinds and grades of schools with so 
many different appellations, different aims 
and different courses of study, that it is diffi- 
cult to arrive at any valid classification. 

We might, in the first place, distinguish 
two great classes of schools below the univer- 
sity, finishing schools and fitting schools. Not 
that these or similar terms are ever used in 
Germany, but they will help us to remember 
that there is one class of schools whose aim it 
is to prepare the pupils for life, and another 
to fit them for the university. 

Preparation for College 
German schools which fit boys for admis- 



Visit to German Schools 145 

sion to the university (and until recently there 
were no such schools for girls) differ from 
American high schools in an important re- 
spect. The American high school receives 
the pupil in his thirteenth or fourteenth year 
and after he has finished the work of the 
common schools. The German Gymnasium, 
which is the name given to the fitting school, 
takes pupils nine years old, or younger, after 
they have finished the primary grade. 

In American schools the future college boy 
received his first education in common with 
the other children that are not to go to college. 
In Germany, on the contrary, the college boy 
is educated in special schools from almost the 
very beginning of his career. For the Ger- 
man boy who has finished the common school 
there is no longer any university education 
possible. He must decide when he is about 
nine years old whether or not he is going to the 
university. His future calling must be deter- 
mined at a very much earlier age and perhaps 
before his talents and inclinations have fully 
manifested themselves. The wishes, tradi- 
tions and social rank of the family usually 
decide the matter. It should be remembered, 
that in order to follow any profession whatso- 
ever, whether that of minister, physician, 
10 



146 -The Century and the School 

lawyer, or teacher in higher schools, it is 
requisite, in Germany, to be a university 
graduate. If a boy wishes to go to the uni- 
versity he must enter a gymnasium or classic 
high school when he is nine or ten years old 
and remain there for about eight years. 

The People's School 

Leaving for the present the "Gymnasia" or 
classic high schools preparing for the uni- 
versity, we return to the much larger class of 
schools, which we designated before as 
"finishing schools." None of the pupils of 
these schools could ever enter the university, 
although the course of study of some of them 
covers the same number of years as the gym- 
nasium. These schools prepare for life, and 
in accordance with the humbler or more 
responsible position the child is expected to 
fill, that is to say, in accordance with the social 
position and aspirations of the parents. The 
course of study of the finishing schools may be 
simple or more complicated. There are in 
every city public schools in which merely the 
rudiments are taught and other public schools 
in which the course of study is much richer. 

According to the more or less extended 
course of study in these schools, we may 



Visit to German Schools 147 

recognize two classes. One is the so-called 
"People's School" in which the course is re- 
duced to that circle of information which the 
government considers absolutely necessary 
and without which no citizen of the state 
should be allowed to grow up. All the coun- 
try schools and the lowest grade of town and 
city schools belong to this class. The people's 
school in many of the villages is a one-room 
school and from thirty to eighty children 
may be taught by one teacher. In cities 
the people's schools are graded and taught 
similarly to our own schools. The subjects 
of instruction for the lower schools are re- 
ligion, the three R's, geometry and the ele- 
ments of geography, history and natural 
history, all these with special reference to the 
child's environment, and of the town and 
province in which he lives. To this must be 
added lessons in singing, drawing, with gym- 
nastics for the boys and needlework for the 
girls. It will be seen at a glance that the 
course of even the lowest schools is varied 
and rich. 

The second class of the "finishing" schools 
is peculiar to city life. They are called 
"Middle Schools" because they are intended 
not so much for the needs of the rural people 



H48 The Century and the School 

or the laboring population, but for the so- 
called middle classes in towns and cities. We 
have arrived at the following preliminary 
classification: Gymnasia, common schools 
(or people's schools) and middle schools. 

The middle schools differ from the peo- 
ple's schools in their longer list of studies and 
their extended course of instruction. It ap- 
pears from this definition that there is a large 
number of kinds of middle schools, differing 
in the list of their studies and the number of 
grades in their course. The middle schools 
exist in the German cities side by side with 
the people's school, so that the parent has 
the choice between more or less extended 
courses of instruction for his child. There is 
an obligation for every parent to give his child 
at least the minimum of an education, such as 
the people's school imparts, but there is no 
obligation to give him the fuller education of 
the middle schools. Yet in the large cities 
the latter class is more numerous than the 
former, although all public schools, of higher 
grade, charge a tuition fee. There is no obli- 
gation to any municipality to maintain schools 
higher than the people's schools, but there is 
hardly any city without middle schools. The 
support of the people to the educational plans 



Visit to German Schools 149 

of the government is hearty, spontaneous and 
liberal. They maintain schools much above 
the grade prescribed by the government. 

The middle school has been defined by 
the Prussian Secretary of Education as "that 
school which, on one side, aims at a higher 
education than can be given in the graded 
people's school, and which, on the other hand, 
considers more particularly the demands of 
industrial life and of the so-called middle 
classes." At least one foreign language is 
studied in these middle schools, usually 
French. In the more advanced middle 
schools English is added. While in the village 
schools boys and girls are taught together in 
the same room, there is, as a rule, no co-edu- 
cation in cities, but the schools for the sexes 
are of about the same rank and take the same 
studies. 

It should be remembered, however, that- 
this is true for the finishing schools only. 
Women are not admitted to the German uni- 
versities and until a short time ago there was 
not a single gymnasium for girls. 

The results obtained in modern languages 
in some of the middle schools are quite good 
and the teachers frequently use the French or 
English language in the explanation of the 



150 The Century and the School 

authors studied in class. In one of the girls' 
schools in Frankfort I heard a class read, 
translate and analyze a difficult selection of 
Milton's Paradise Lost. The pupils showed 
a thorough familiarity with the higher 
English vocabulary and the finer shades of 
meaning. 

The results of such liberal school training 
is manifest in social life. I met a surprisingly 
large number of people in Berlin, for instance, 
who could talk English very fluently but had 
never been outside of Germany. The people's 
schools and the lower classes of the middle 
schools are, as a rule, taught by men who are 
normal school graduates, the higher classes of 
the middle schools by university graduates. 

Spirit of the German Schools 

I visited all kinds of schools in Germany, 
the village schools in Thuringia, the city 
schools of Cologne, Frankfort and Darmstadt. 
I attended lectures at the University of Berlin. 
I looked into the whittling and wood-carv- 
ing schools of the Bavarian Alps. But what 
impressed me most forcibly, above all other 
admirable things, was the earnestness, energy 
and the skill in handling methods, which the 
common school teacher displayed everywhere. 



Visit to German Schools 151 

There was a full comprehension and prac- 
tical appreciation of what may be called the 
educational creed of Germany, namely, that 
the aim of the school should be education 
rather than knowledge. There seemed to be 
an understanding of the main purpose of edu- 
cation, such as Sydney Smith suggests in his 
well-known saying: "The real object of edu- 
cation is to give children resources that will 
endure as long as life endures; habits that 
time will ameliorate, not destroy; occupation 
that will render sickness tolerable, solitude 
pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified 
and useful and death less terrible." 

There is not as much subject-matter studied 
as we do in our lower schools, less arithmetic, 
less grammar, less geography and history. 
But there is more drill and practice on the 
topics studied. Whatever is taken up is well 
digested through questioning, practice and 
thought. The American visitor notices that 
there is a greater variety in the intellectual 
bill of fare placed before the child than with 
us, although the several dishes of the intellec- 
tual meal are less elaborate and full. Geom- 
etry and natural science, for instance, are 
taught in every village school. Nor are they 
reserved for higher grades. Much of the 



152 The Century and the School 

teaching is done in what is called ''concentric 
circles," Natural science is taught in the 
lowest grade, but each succeeding year, while 
moving round the same center, makes the 
topics more complete and comprehensive. 

The world which surrounds the child is 
clearly set before his mind's eye and made 
more familiar and intelligible to him. Arith- 
metic deals with those simple problems of 
buying and selling, of fractions and decimals, 
of proportion and percentage, which occur in 
every-day life: within the narrow circle of 
these operations, quick thinking is appealed 
to constantly and practice leads to perfection. 
Geography begins with a child's home, locates 
the neighboring villages and streams and in- 
cludes a thorough drill on the geography of 
his own country. The visible movements of 
the heavens, the shape and movements of the 
earth, are made intelligible by actual observa- 
tion. A boy must use his senses and his wits 
to excel and it looked to me as if his success in 
school was made as much dependent on these 
as on his industry. But the principal work 
of the village school centers around the 
reader. In the conversations grouped around 
the reading lessons, the child gets a glimpse 
at the government of the country and learns, 



Visit to German Schools 153 

feelingly, his duties towards the parent, 
towards his neighbor and his country. There 
is the closest communion of soul between 
teacher and pupil. With the exception of 
the recital of hymns or poems committed to 
memory, I witnessed nowhere what we call 
"a recitation." There are no text-books, in 
one sense of the word, in the people's schools. 
They have an arithmetic, but it is simply a 
collection of examples. They have a geog- 
raphy, but it is simply a collection of maps. 
There are no lessons assigned except some 
copying, essay-writing, map-drawing, prac- 
tice on examples taught in school and the like. 
All the teaching and drill takes place in 
schools by the teacher. 

The aim of public schools has been va- 
riously defined. With us it has been cus- 
tomary to lay stress on the importance of 
education for the preservation of the state. 
That was the idea which the father of our 
country connected with education. His 
words are well known: "Promote as an object 
of primary importance institutions for the 
general diffusion of knowledge. In pro- 
portion as the structure of the government 
gives force to public opinion, it should be 
enlightened." 



154 The Century and the School 

Two sayings of Horace Mann tend in the 
same direction: "Schoolhouses are the repub- 
lican line of fortifications," and again "Edu- 
cation is our only political safety. Outside 
of this ark, all is deluge." 

The German official definition of the aim 
of the people's school lays rather more stress 
on the ethical side than on the political. It 
says: "The people's school aims at imparting 
to youth, thorough instruction, practice and 
education, the principles of religious, ethical 
and national culture and the general knowl- 
edge and acquirements that are necessary for 
social life." 

The personnel of the German teacher in the 
primary schools did not seem to be equal to 
that found in the corresponding grade of our 
own schools, at least not in regard to social 
culture and general information. But there 
is in every case superior musical culture, and 
a most thorough understanding of methods 
of teaching. Even in the village schools 
admirable professional skill was displayed. 
There was a distinct plan evident in every step 
of teaching. The normal schools, in which 
all the teachers of the lower schools are edu- 
cated, are doing invaluable service to the Ger- 
man schools. 



Visit to German Schools 155 

The philosophy of education is evidently 
thoroughly studied and, what is still more 
remarkable, is carried into practice. I can- 
not pass this topic without directing attention 
to the movement, new in our country, towards 
the study of the greatest educational phil- 
osopher of the last century, Herbart. His 
ideas of concentration of instruction and the 
rousing of a many-sided interest in the 
pupil are among the most fruitful peda- 
gogic thoughts. 

A few of the most striking details of the 
German common schools may here be noticed 
in a passing way. There is, in the first place, 
a steady adjustment of instruction to the sur- 
roundings of the child and to his future posi- 
tion in life. School teaching is full of moral 
and civic ideals, but it is also eminently prac- 
tical. In the simple natural history the pupil 
studies the class characteristics of some few 
typical specimens of the animal world, the 
birds and quadrupeds which he has occasion 
to observe in his home. 

The botanical lessons extend to the study of 
useful and hurtful plants, the grains, the 
forest trees, the coffee plant, the tobacco plant, 
etc. The child learns to know the minerals 
of his district, their characteristics and their 



156 The Century and the School 

place in a natural system, and is able to give 
an account of them. Often on my wanderings 
over the hills near the watering place of Kis- 
singen, I met classes of country boys with 
their teacher botanizing and studying nature. 
It is a very frequent form of amusement for 
the boys to make collections of minerals, but- 
terflies, bugs, etc., and these remain a source 
of interest to them until they grow to man- 
hood. 

The Teacher's Influence on the Home 

Teachers hold their office through life. In 
consequence the same teacher not infrequently 
has educated two generations of the same 
family and enjoys unbounded personal con- 
fidence and respect, not to say veneration. He 
knows the family circumstances of every 
pupil. School and home are kept in close 
educational touch by this relation. It is the 
universal policy of every German family to 
instil respect for the teacher, and this helps 
the discipline of the school. 

Examinations 

Written examinations used to be unknown 
in the common schools, yet I have seen some 
conducted in the schools of Berlin. Even in 



Visit to German Schools 157 

this detail pedagogical tact is manifested. In 
several rooms of the school that I visited, the 
teacher would give out a question, but would 
not allow the children to touch their pens. 
They were required to listen, then were given 
a moment or two to reflect, and then the com- 
mand was given : "Take your pens and write." 
It seems a little device, but it secured very 
thoughtful work on the paper. 

Visiting Days 

The school attempts to remain in close touch 
with the home. In cases of discipline the 
teacher sends for the parent, so that they 
may consult together in regard to the 
special treatment that the child should receive 
at home, in order to second the efforts of the 
school. Home reports are given out at reg- 
ular intervals, as in our own schools. From 
time to time a "visiting day" is appointed, 
when the parents are urgently requested to 
come to the school to witness a day's work. 
No preparation whatever is made for this day 
except the placing of chairs in each room. 
The daily prayer is not departed from and the 
recitations go on as usual. There are per- 
haps a few more review questions asked than 
ordinarily. 



158 The Century and the School 

The advantages of these "visiting days" are 
obvious. The parents become acquainted 
(with the character and method of the work 
r done in every school, and with the teachers. 

In Germany, the graded city school, with 
the exception of the primary grade, divides 
the work among the teachers, not by rooms but 
by subjects. That is to say, there is a teacher 
ftvho teaches arithmetic most of the time and 
changes rooms with every recitation. An- 
other teacher teaches reading, another natural 
science and so forth. The regular teacher of 
the room frequently teaches more lessons than 
the others, but when he has finished these he 
goes to some other room to teach there. 
Teachers change rooms, classes do not. Every 
class of the common schools in German cities 
is taught, not by one, but by a number of 
teachers. The chief advantages claimed for 
this plan are that teachers are employed in 
the specific work which they do best and that 
the child continues the study of the same sub- 
ject, arithmetic for instance, with the same 
teacher for years, thus securing connected 
work and undivided responsibility for results. 

On these visiting days, therefore, the parent 
becomes personally acquainted with the whole 
corps of teachers of a school. It is the day 



Visit to German Schools 159 

when they can confer with the principals and 
get advice. The teacher in turn obtains a 
glimpse of the home surroundings of the child. 

Public Games 

Every means is used to make the children 
manly and strong. Excursions by the school 
into the country for recreation and instruc- 
tion are not infrequent. 

In the city of Frankfort public games for 
school children are frequently arranged for 
Saturday afternoon where the boys of various 
schools compete in manly exercises, ball games 
and similar sport. The school board makes 
an appropriation for this purpose and the 
teachers are present. While attendance is 
voluntary, the square or park is crowded with 
visitors and children and they enter into the 
games with enthusiastic zeal. Participation 
in these games is voluntary but children that 
volunteer at the beginning of the year are 
obliged to continue. 

Swimming 

Wherever circumstances permit lessons in 
swimming are provided and the whole school, 
under the supervision of their teacher, goes to 
the river or lake regularly several mornings 



160 The Century and the School 

every week. There are swimming schools for 
girls as well as swimming schools for the boys. 

Sanitary Measures 

In Darmstadt I found that in some schools, 
located in the poorer part of the city, provision 
was made in the school basement for warm 
baths. Divisions of children were sent down 
during school hours, under proper super- 
vision, to enjoy a comfort which the poorer 
homes perhaps could not afford. 

The city schools of Frankfort are supplied 
with adjustable desks. Several times during 
the year the medical examiner visits the school 
buildings, measures the height of each pupil 
and writes on the desk of the latter, the height 
to which the desk must be adjusted. Until 
the next visit of the examiner each pupil keeps 
the seat thus assigned to him. 

Buildings 

The common school buildings from an 
architectural standpoint seem superior to 
ours. The interior arrangement and appoint- 
ments of the rooms I did not like so well. 
The rooms seemed smaller than ours; there 
are as a rule but one or two wooden black- 
boards placed on easels in each room. In not 



Visit to German Schools 161 

a few cases, even in new school buildings, the 
wraps of the pupils were hung on the walls of 
the schoolroom. Nor did the ventilation of 
some rooms seem perfect, but, it should be 
remembered, it is hazardous to generalize 
from the comparatively few rooms which we 
can visit in the course of a few months. 

The building and the grounds, however, 
seemed superior to the average building with 
us. They are, as a rule, large enough for the 
whole school to play and exercise simulta- 
neously. At the end of every recitation a re- 
cess of about ten minutes is given in the yard. 
The school hours are longer than they are with 
us. In one of the higher schools, classes were 
kept practically at work from seven to twelve 
and from two to five. 

The schools rank high in public favor and 
private munificence often supplies the wants 
of the poorer children. Thus I noticed in one 
of the school reports a record of a gift of 
$25,000 to buy clothes for needy children. 

Private schools and public schools are alike 
under the supervision of the state, whose 
officers visit them regularly for inspection and 
examination. In the conduct of the schools 
local and government authority mingle. The 
state prescribes a minimum of requirements 
11 



1 62 The Century and the School 

in regard to schoolhouses, courses of study, 
school apparatus, teacher's salary, etc., which 
the community must meet; but there are very 
few towns which are not in advance of this 
minimum requirement. Among the school 
commissioners of large cities there is a presid- 
ing government officer, a lawyer and some 
other permanently appointed government 
magistrates; the rest are delegated by the city 
council. 

Tuition 

The German public schools are not free in 
our sense of the word; a tuition fee is charged 
in most of them, especially those whose course 
of study rises above the rudiments. The fix- 
ing of the tuition fee is left with the municipal 
commissioners, but the government prescribes 
a minimum beyond which the school author- 
ities cannot charge. For towns of less than 
6000 inhabitants it is less than $2.00 per year. 

In some larger cities tuition in the lowest 
class of the schools is made absolutely free, 
while an increasing tuition rate is charged for 
all schools of higher order. Special pro- 
vision is made, however, for poor people, so 
that their children are not excluded from the 
benefits of a higher education, if they choose 
to avail themselves of it. 



Visit to German Schools 163 

The Teacher's Position 

We now turn for a moment to what will per- 
haps interest many of us, to the tenure of office 
of the German teacher, and we find two strik- 
ing features on which we might dwell for a 
moment: The absolute security of the teacher's 
tenure of office and his independence from 
the caprice of local school boards. 

Appointment of Teachers 

All appointments are made first on proba- 
tion and then after a fixed time become 
permanent. In Prussia all teachers of schools 
of higher order must pass through a year of 
probation. 

Teachers of the primary or people's schools, 
after passing their first government examina- 
tion, teach for a period of no less than two, 
nor more than five years, subject to discharge 
by the local school authorities. After this 
probationary period he passes a second gov- 
ernment examination, and then receives a 
permanent and irrevocable appointment. 
While he is appointed by the local school 
board, after being once permanently ap- 
pointed, he no longer holds his place at their 
pleasure, subject to periodic reelection, but as 
a government officer, who may be removed 



164 The Century and the School 

against his will only by trial in the courts or 
by the disciplinary committee of the govern- 
ment. 

Not the local board, but the government 
has the right to decide whether an appoint- 
ment shall be probationary or permanent. 

The school superintendents or supervisors 
are government officers, not dependent on the 
good will of the local board, whose schools 
they supervise, and whose actions they may be 
called upon to censure or reverse. 
Teachers' Examinations 

The examination of all teachers is conducted 
by government officers. In a general way it 
may be said that all the teachers in the people's 
schools are normal graduates, whose final nor- 
mal school examination qualifies them for 
probationary appointment. This examination 
is both written and oral. It consists of one 
composition on an educational or literary sub- 
ject, and another on some topic of religious 
instruction. Three examples in arithmetic 
and geometry must be worked out and one 
question in each of the studies of history, 
science and geography must be answered. 
The candidate may be examined at his option 
in some foreign language, to obtain a higher 
grade. 



Visit to German Schools 165 

The oral examination consists, in the first 
place, of some trial teaching in the presence 
of the examiners. The subject is assigned to 
the candidate two days previously and he must 
file a written synopsis of the proposed lesson 
before he gives it to the children. 

The rest of the oral examination extends 
over all the normal school studies, i.e., Science 
and history of education, school manage- 
ment, Bible lessons, language and literature, 
history, arithmetic and geometry, the elements 
of natural history, physics and chemistry, 
geography, drawing, penmanship, gymnastics, 
music, including the piano, organ and violin. 
The village teacher, as a rule, is required to 
play the organ in the church on Sundays. 

The second examination takes place after 
the young teacher has taught on probation 
from two to five years, and precedes the 
permanent appointment. Its topics are taken 
from the practical work of the schoolroom 
and the history and science of education. The 
Examining Government Commission issues 
to the successful candidate a certificate which 
declares him qualified for permanent appoint- 
ment. When once so appointed, no local 
board can remove him. He is a government 
officer. 



1 66 The Century and the School 

For the high classes of the so-called middle 
class school, more advanced examinations are 
required and the positions there are chiefly 
held by university men, theologians or philol- 
ogists. 

University Influence 

In this connection a word might be said of 
the great influence which the twenty univer- 
sities exert on the German schools, or in fact 
on every phase of German life. 

There is no way to any of the professions of 
theology, of law, medicine or teaching in the 
higher grade schools, except through the uni- 
versity. Most of the chemists, pharmacists, 
engineers, higher civil officers, etc., have a 
university education. There is no way of 
entering the university except through the clas- 
sic schools, the gymnasium with its extensive 
Latin and Greek courses, or the Realschule, 
in which modern languages are substituted 
for Greek. It will be seen that classical edu- 
cation spreads through almost every rank of 
life and that the leading men in the German 
communities have a university education. In 
the city schools, the principals, all the teach- 
ers in the gymnasia, and many of the teachers 
in the middle and lower schools are university 
men. 



Visit to German Schools 167 

While with us the old idea still lingers in 
a few places that a higher education is desir- 
able as a foundation for the acquirement of 
a profession, in Germany the opinion pre- 
vails in practice that no one is fit for leading 
professions who does not have a university 
education. The idea, especially, that a good 
education unfits a man for manual labor and 
the life of a worker, is not found in that coun- 
try. Public opinion tends somewhat in the 
direction of Bishop Whately's sentiment, 
which we may be allowed to quote: "Any one 
who says with Mandeville, 'If a horse knew 
as much as a man, I should not like to be his 
rider,' ought to add, ( If a man knew as little 
as a horse, I should not like to trust him to 
ride.' " 

The civil service rules of the government 
lay great stress on higher education as a con- 
dition for appointment to any higher office in 
the administrative, postal, telegraph and 
transportation departments. 

For graduates of the gymnasia and other 
higher schools, the rigidly required three 
years of military service are reduced to one. 
All these influences tend to make higher edu- 
cation in Germany both valuable and profit- 
able. 



1 68 The Century and the School 

Universities 

It is beyond the scope and possibility of the 
present paper to give a description of the Ger- 
man university. Suffice it to say that it has 
a double function, namely, to teach the youths 
that have left the classical school, and second, 
to cultivate and advance science in every 
department. Appointment to the university 
takes place on the sole basis of eminence in 
scholarship, manifested by original literary 
or scientific work. The university duties of 
the professors are such as to encourage orig- 
inal research on the part of the professors and 
students by giving every facility in regard to 
libraries, apparatus and laboratories, by allow- 
ing much time for study and by giving to every 
individual, especially in the teaching corps, 
the greatest freedom of scope. 

Pensions 

The low salaries which the German gov- 
ernment pays to subordinate officers, especially 
to the teachers in the public schools, has given 
rise to the idea that the government must take 
care of them in their old age, for which their 
salaries are insufficient to provide. 

Teachers who become permanently inca- 
pacitated to fulfil their duties on account of 



Visit to German Schools 169 

physical or mental infirmities may be pen- 
sioned on their request, or, where deemed 
proper, without it. If a teacher is pensioned 
during the first ten years of service the pension 
is forty per cent of his salary. For every 
further year of service one and a half per cent 
is added, until the pension reaches the full 
amount of the salary. Superannuated teach- 
ers may claim a pension without the plea of 
infirmity. 

In the matter of pensioning the government 
bears the main burden. In Prussia the gov- 
ernment pays fifty-nine, and the municipal- 
ities thirty-six per cent of the total amount, 
five per cent coming from other sources. 

Government Care 

While the appointment of teachers is left 
with the local board of trustees, the govern- 
ment prescribes the minimum salary to which 
every teacher is entitled, and which is graded 
by the number of inhabitants of a district. 
Sometimes private munificence helps the gov- 
ernment in improving salaries. Thus, a Coun- 
cilor May, who died in 1808, left his fortune 
as a joint and permanent legacy to all the 
teachers of his county who received less than 
300 florins per year and the interest has been 



170 The Century and the School 

distributed in this way for nearly a century. 

In many of the German states the salaries 
are made progressive with the years of service, 
rising in instances from 1350 marks for the 
first five years to 2500 marks after the twenty- 
fifth year of service. The salaries are gen- 
erally low and inadequate, the average salary 
for country teachers being $320, for city teach- 
ers $460. This is not the total income, because 
each teacher is entitled to some reimbursement 
for house-rent. 

Conclusion 

We Have finished the bird's-eye view of 
German educational institutions and are once 
more homeward bound. 

The teacher who has traveled in other 
lands returns with various impressions. He 
brings with him much new experience, new 
devices in teaching, new thoughts on educa- 
tion ; he values the grand work which is being 
done in his profession all over Europe, and 
he feels proud of the universal respect with 
which the humble calling of the teacher is 
looked upon by the older nations of the earth. 
But he also appreciates more keenly than ever 
the noble system of public schools in his own 
land so simple, so effective and so liberal in 
its grand design. 



Visit to German Schools 171 

The common schools furnish one system for 
all, for the rich and poor, good enough for the 
one, cheap enough for the other, the gifts of 
knowledge descending into palace and hut like 
the generous rays of the sun. There is no di- 
vision into castes, social rank and classes at the 
very beginning of a child's school career. 

The teacher who returns from an educa- 
tional tour through Europe feels new courage 
in the consciousness that he belongs to a great 
army of workers who labor for a nobler 
humanity in the child-soul. All over the 
world the grand army of teachers in the midst 
of humble conditions, sometimes in poverty 
and want, shape with unflagging zeal the 
future of mankind. 

The honor and dignity of our work becomes 
more real when we see the same spirit of 
devotion and self-sacrifice manifested every- 
where in the world, and the returning teacher 
again records his vow to devote his best effort 
to the hero and savior of the future, the child 
of the present day. He realizes lovingly the 
beautiful words of the ancient Talmud of the 
Jews: "The world is only saved by the breath 
of little children." 



READING IN THE HIGHER GRADES 

Ik no study has there been a greater im- 
provement than in reading. The character 
of the readers in use at present in the leading 
schools everywhere in the United States places 
in the child's hands most excellent examples 
of classic English literature. The educa- 
tional progress made in this study consists not 
merely in the increased ability of the average 
child to read fluently and correctly; children 
have learned to like reading, and they read of 
their own accord. 

Culture and refinement always result from 
the faithful study of the masterpieces of liter- 
ature. In many cities boards of education 
have supplied the schools with sets of books 
of the highest literary character for supple- 
mentary reading, and the growth of the chil- 
dren under the influence of these literary helps 
has been marked. It has had a beneficial 
effect not only on the language studies, but, 
through the general influence on the mental 
growth of the child, has benefited other studies 
as well. 

172 



Reading in the Higher Grades 173 

Much is being done by teachers everywhere 
to encourage the use of the public library, and, 
in turn, the public library boards supply lib- 
erally the best books for juvenile reading. 

When we speak of reading in the schools, 
we are apt to think rather of fluency, correct- 
ness and the like, than of the training the child 
receives through thoughtful study of the read- 
ing lesson. 

The great educational and practical impor- 
tance of reading is, that it introduces the child 
to the world at large, both in a physical and a 
spiritual sense. It opens to him a wider ho- 
rizon, and gives him nobler aspirations and 
purer sympathies ; takes the child or man, for 
the time, from the close limitations of his 
accustomed life, from the narrow circle of his 
few acquaintances, and puts him in the midst 
of new and varied scenes of nature and history. 
The walls of the room fall away, and the 
world opens; there is no aspect of nature, no 
relation of life, no trait of the human soul, of 
which the thoughtful reader remains ignorant. 

Education must prepare for the serious pur- 
poses of life. One of its great tasks is the 
introduction of the child at an early age to 
the larger life of the world. Externally, the 
process of making the child a member of 



174 The Century and the School 

society is begun when he enters the kin- 
dergarten and meets other children whose 
rights he learns to respect. Through his in- 
tercourse with them, he learns gradually to 
curb his arbitrary will, to respect the rights 
of others, and to live and work with his equals. 
But education must introduce the child into 
human society in a broader sense; it must not 
only fit him to become, through trained char- 
acter and intelligence, a valuable member of 
society, it must also give him a glimpse at the 
ways of the world beyond the limits of his 
own narrow life experience. 

The child must be introduced into the cur- 
rent of the universal life as it pulsates in the 
social life of his age, and in the institutions 
and history of his nation. His narrow, per- 
sonal and direct experience must be supple- 
mented and cleared by the wider and indi- 
rectly transmitted experience of the world. 
There is no way in which this civilizing 
process can be brought about as naturally, 
efficiently, and forcibly as through reading. 
By means of well-selected and properly con- 
ducted reading lessons, the thoughts of others, 
their lives, the thoughts of past times, an 
infinite variety of social conditions and rela- 
tions, the character and motives of other peo- 



Reading in the Higher Grades 173 

pie, the beauty and weakness of human action, 
are revealed to the child and widen his per- 
sonal experience. The larger world beyond 
his family and school dawns upon him, when 
he has been taught to read intelligently. 
Reading means the humanizing of the soul, 
because it makes it participate in the pulsation 
of the social and spiritual life of the race. 
Reading makes the mind omnipresent in time 
and space. 

All modern school readers are replete with 
lessons that acquaint the child with the noblest 
flower and fruit of the life of his own nation. 
Some of the grandest aspects of American life 
are depicted in them. When in the story of 
Daniel Boone there is told how those seven- 
teen sturdy yeomen and farmers met in the 
new lands of Kentucky to constitute a legal 
body, agreeing that the Sabbath must be 
observed, that the laws must be respected, that 
there shall be civic order in their colony, and 
when they morally bound themselves to stand 
by those laws, the story is not only choice liter- 
ature through its noble language, but the 
facts presented give to the young mind a 
glimpse of the noble and unique features of 
the character of the people to which he be- 
longs. Through well-selected reading lessons 



176 The Century and the School 

the child thus becomes acquainted with the 
history of his own land, and is impressed with 
the great events and thoughts of its social and 
political life, as reflected in literature. 

Good reading humanizes the child; we 
might have used the equivalent expression 
that it civilizes him. Civilization, as a per- 
sonal quality, means fitness for life as an intel- 
ligent member of society and state. Much 
more than this is demanded as a result of suc- 
cessful education. Man must not be merely 
an intelligent, but also, and still more em- 
phatically, a moral being. With the training 
for civilized intelligence and refinement, moral 
culture must go hand in hand. An ethical 
world must be reared in the child's soul over 
which spreads a moral firmament illumined 
by the glowing stars of human virtues. There 
is no means of ethical training more efficient 
than well-conducted lessons in reading. They 
create in the child's soul ideals, and fill him 
with noble aspirations. His moral judgment 
turns against whatever in the story appears 
low and selfish. All good literature glorifies 
duty and goodness, and reading fills the young 
mind with ennobling ideals. The fact that 
reading may lead to the building up of a new 
soul, and to the refinement of the native con- 



Reading in the Higher Grades 177 

science, the fact that it exercises moral judg- 
ment as to the relations of life, of which the 
child would remain ignorant, without instruc- 
tion in reading in the higher grades, is one 
more reason why the thoughtful educator 
assigns to reading the first place in the cur- 
riculum of the school. 

Reading is the magic mantle of which the 
poet speaks, which carries us on the wings of 
thought to wherever we desire to go, that 
"wafts him o'er the world at pleasure." 
Strange and distant lands become near and 
familiar. Times long past become real and 
present to the reader's mind. From the ends 
of time, from past centuries or decades, noble 
voices hold converse with him. He listens to 
Plato or Aristotle, Addison or Victor Hugo, 
Washington or Jefferson, and he becomes 
their confidant and companion. Noble spirits 
come and go at his wish. The wise and good 
of mankind advise and befriend him. They 
help to mold his character and to shape his 
life. 

A college president has recently been quoted 
as saying, "If I want to engage a teacher, I 
want a man, in the first place, and in the sec- 
ond place I want a man who can teach." In 
a similar way, the classic authors have been in 
12 



178 The Century and the School 

most cases both strong men and great writers. 
The great masterpieces of literature mirror 
the manhood and personality of the authors 
who, in their spiritual lives, stand above 
the rest of humanity, and whose genius has 
obtained glimpses of divine truths which they, 
like the prophets and seers of old, proclaim 
and reveal to the world that reads their books. 

Through reading the child enters into the 
companionship of the noblest minds, because 
the authors whose writings we are likely to 
select for him have the characteristics of 
strong manhood and womanhood. In becom- 
ing acquainted with literature, the child not 
only comes into contact with the grand works 
of literary art, but he is brought into touch 
with the greatest personalities which human 
history has produced. 

Reading is important not merely for utili- 
tarian reasons. It is necessary for the pur- 
suits of life, and that is a primary, practical 
and material reason for placing it first among 
the school studies. But there is a higher edu- 
cational and spiritual reason for its position in 
the school curriculum, based on the inestima- 
ble value of the contents of literature for the 
growing soul and for the human life that is 
to be shaped through education. 



Reading in the Higher Grades 179 

These two points of view from which in- 
struction in reading may be considered have a 
direct and practical bearing on the work of 
the school. Instruction in reading must im- 
part to the child, in the first place, the full 
mastery of the mechanism of reading. He 
must, in the course of his school career, be- 
come able to read fluently and correctly any 
ordinary printed matter placed before him. 
No other acquisition can possibly be an excuse 
for deficiency in this particular. On the other 
hand, instruction in reading will not have that 
educational influence which constitutes its 
highest value, unless the child is brought into 
touch — direct, living, interested touch — in 
sentiment and thought, with the master-mind 
that stands back of the printed page. 

The idea that reading is the child's means 
of entering into sympathetic companionship 
with the great men of the race and sharing 
their thoughts and sentiments, leads to the 
conclusion that the teacher, in using the read- 
ing books with his classes, must single out for 
special attention those selections in which 
there is a noble thought presented, or in which 
human life is depicted in its best aspects. 

Methods of teaching reading must be so 
adjusted that the ennobling influence of liter- 



180 The Century and the School 

ature becomes a substantial and ever-present 
element of the work of the school. That this 
can be done is apparent from the fact that it 
is being done in the best schools all over the 
country. Every teacher should know how to 
make this theory an actual condition in her 
schoolroom. In teaching, for instance, the 
reading of the selection from Robert C. Win- 
throp's "The Flag of Our Country," it is the 
teacher's task, in the first place, to secure the 
ready, correct and expressive reading of the 
language of the poem, the explanation of dif- 
ficult passages, the pronunciation and mean- 
ing of unusual words. But if instruction stops 
with this, there is an opportunity wasted and 
lost. The teacher fails to accomplish the 
highest task unless she can lead the child fully 
to realize and share the author's sentiment, 
and feel with patriotic emotion the force of 
the author's words on the flag of his country: 
"Behold it! Listen to it! Every star has a 
tongue; every stripe is articulate." "There is 
no speech nor language where their voice is 
not heard." 

Bacon said: "Reading makes a full man, 
conference a ready man, and writing an exact 
man." Reading, speaking and writing are the 
three main lines of all language study. On 



Reading in the Higher Grades 181 

which of them should we lay stress in training 
the child? Should he be full of information; 
should he be able to use his knowledge readily, 
and with fair exactness? The answer, as a 
matter of course, is that the child needs all 
three — a fair degree of information, and read- 
iness and clearness in its use. Each of them is 
necessary, and methods of instruction in read- 
ing must embody the acquisition of knowl- 
edge and its use in speech and writing. It 
follows that all school reading, in order to fill 
the mind with information, must be not merely 
a speaking of the words, but, simultaneously 
and pre-eminently, a grasping of the thought. 
This is true of the very first step in primary 
reading, and equally true of the classic selec- 
tions in the higher grades. The teacher 
should not be satisfied with having the chil- 
dren merely pronounce the words; she must 
see that they grasp the idea underlying each 
selection. 

The possession of the mechanical art of 
reading is, by common consent, made the 
dividing line which separates the educated 
man from the illiterate. Not his ability to 
cipher, nor his knowledge of the rudiments 
of history or geography, is made the test, but 
his ability to read print and write his name. 



1 82 THe Century and the School 

All the world over, the statistician's figures of 
illiteracy are based on the test of mechanical 
reading. Reading is considered the measure 
and test of general education. 

Life's requirement, that the schools should 
train children to be able to read common 
words at sight, is merely a minimum demand; 
but it is at the same time a most essential 
requirement. The school may do, and ought 
to do, more for the child in the study of read- 
ing than to make him a ready reader; it cannot 
afford to do less. No matter what other tasks 
and studies the school charges itself with, this 
remains the most elementary and the most 
indispensable. The school that does not train 
ready readers is a weak school, no matter what 
else may be accomplished successfully in other 
studies. Reading must rank first in every 
school curriculum, both from a practical and 
from an educational point of view. It is the 
earliest task that school education must under- 
take, and is therefore a test of the efficiency 
of primary instruction. On the acquisition of 
the mechanical art of reading school instruc- 
tion must lay stress in every grade, and be 
indefatigable in the watchful practice of ready 
reading. In this the demands of life and that 
of educational science coalesce; reading forms 



Reading in the Higher Grades 183 

the key to every other study of the school. 
Educational considerations demand more 
from this study than the mere mastery of the 
mechanism of pronouncing words at sight. 
The derivation of the Latin word or the 
French word for reading, suggests the idea of 
gathering together something. It seems to 
mean the putting together of letters to form a 
word. The Anglo-Saxon word from which 
we derive our own does not mean to gather 
signs together through the eye, but means to 
counsel, to suggest, to explain. Thus, the 
English word "to read" points in itself to 
something more than the mere ability to ex- 
press, in speech, the written character, and 
suggests another, far deeper, reason why read- 
ing should be placed first in a course of 
instruction. It does not reject the merely 
formal idea connected with it, namely, the 
mechanical ability to pronounce readily the 
word for which certain signs stand, but it 
means much more. It means that the reader 
should grasp the thought held in the printed 
word. It rises above the minimum require- 
ments of business life, and above merely 
mechanical schoolroom practices, to a higher 
view of the purposes of reading. The me- 
chanical art of reading, absolutely essential as 



184 The Century and the School 

it is, becomes an indispensable but subor- 
dinate means to an end that ranks infinitely- 
higher. It places the importance of reading 
in the content and thought rather than in the 
form and the words. 

While each of the various purposes which 
reading must subserve imposes certain specific 
demands on the practical methods of teaching 
it, it would be a mistake to suppose that all 
these aims are equivalent and that they can 
receive equal attention. All the indirect and 
higher advantages that should come from 
well-directed reading lessons are in turn 
dependent on the mastery of the mechanical 
art. To it every single lesson in reading in 
any grade must contribute. Material as well 
as spiritual considerations demand that the 
teacher should in the first place insist upon 
the fluent, correct and expressive reading of 
the printed characters; all the other purposes 
are secured through this skill. No higher 
demand can possibly take the place of this 
elementary requirement. Nothing can be 
substituted for the attainment of fluency 
and mechanical correctness. Towards it the 
attention and persistent efforts of the teacher 
in every grade must constantly be directed. 
The other aims are of vital importance in the 



Reading in the Higher Grades 185 

process of education, but they may possibly be 
accomplished, at least in a measure, by the 
youth's own effort. If he is mechanically a 
skilful reader, his mind may penetrate the 
thoughts and sentiments of the selection with- 
out the teacher's help. Some educators, most 
thoughtful otherwise in the study of peda- 
gogical science, ignore the very important fact 
that the child is not only the passive recipient, 
but is, in his own way, an active gatherer of 
knowledge. He is not only being educated, 
but he is constantly educating himself. He 
is not merely a passive entity, and the educa- 
tional product of teachers and schools, but he 
has independent, spontaneous growth. He 
learns much that he has never been taught, he 
understands much that the teacher has never 
explained. The child need not be taken care 
of in every respect, for in many ways he takes 
quite good care of himself. There are many 
things he is likely to learn and acquire with- 
out anybody's help. Let no educator for a 
moment suppose that what he does not do for 
the child is not done at all. One of the petty 
mistakes of modern methods of instruction is 
the notion that the child will grasp nothing 
unless it is whittled down to the lowest mental 
dimensions. We weary him with artificially 



1 86 The Century and the School 

attenuated information, and befog his intel- 
ligence with superfluous explanations. 

In reading, the teacher's constant and 
watchful help is necessary to lead the child to 
master the mechanical art and at the same 
time to become fully conscious of the ideas 
which they express. But the stress of school- 
room practice must always be laid on the 
former. It would be a great mistake not to 
consider constantly the higher purposes which 
reading serves ; it would be a greater mistake 
to slight the acquisition of the mechanical art, 
by over anxiety that the child should fully 
master the contents. The latter the child 
may possibly do without the aid of the teacher, 
but he will never see the full meaning of the 
words for himself, and use reading as a guide 
to knowledge, and culture, and life, unless 
instruction and drill remove the mechanical 
difficulties of the art of reading at an early 
day. It is only after the recognition of the 
printed word has become an automatic process 
that undivided attention can be given by the 
child to the ideal world that lives in the books. 
Hence the very conviction that the great edu- 
cational value of reading does not lie in the 
mechanical art, but in the culture to be derived 
from the contents, is in itself the prime reason 



Reading in the Higher Grades 187 

for the most thorough and persistent drill in 
fluent and correct reading. The child must 
master the form before he can reach the 
content. 

In the programs of some modern elementary 
schools this study has changed its name. The 
term "reading" has been abandoned, and the 
word "literature" substituted. The reason 
given for the change is that reading is merely 
a formal art, and that the name of the study 
should indicate its substance rather than its 
form. Conceding the self-evident truth of 
the proposition that reading should lead to 
something beyond the mastery of the mere 
form of the words, the substitution of the new 
term does not seem warranted. The English 
word "reading" means the mastery of both the 
form and content. There is good reason for 
preferring the term "reading" to the modern 
substitute, "literature," as a name for the 
common school study. Reading is the name 
for a power; literature the name for a certain 
body of knowledge. The power question at 
the end of a common school education is not: 
"Does the child know literature?" but rather, 
"Can he read?" The new name seems to 
place the stress on an important but not the 
most important aim — on knowledge rather 



1 88 The Century and the School 

than on power. The word reading, rightly 
understood, means both the acquisition of the 
art, and the possession of a knowledge of some 
literary works. 

In the acquisition of his mother tongue, or 
of any language, the mind of the learner has 
a twofold task. When the infant listens to 
the speech of others, when the boy listens to 
the words of the teacher, or reads his lessons, 
his mind is absorbing language and informa- 
tion. It is receptive, and in a measure pas- 
sive. When you read a book there is no 
apparent activity; you allow the thought of 
the author to flow unresisted into your soul, 
you permit his images to act on the stage of 
your own mind. Your thoughts are made the 
instrument on which the hand of another 
plays. The chords of your soul vibrate in 
response to his touch. The current of your 
thoughts is directed by the author who lived 
and wrote perhaps three centuries ago. He 
plays on the instrument of your mind, and 
makes you see the visions of his own. Your 
mind is under another's control. In listening, 
or reading, the mind is in a receptive attitude. 
It is determined by external agencies. 

There is another aspect of language, in 
which the mental attitude is no longer recep- 



Reading in the Higher Grades 189 

tive and determined externally, but active, 
creative and self-determined. When you 
answer a question, when you speak to a friend, 
the words and thoughts are the product and 
spontaneous expression of your own soul. The 
mind is not in a receptive but in a creative, 
active and self-determining attitude. There 
is in all language this double element of 
determination and self-determination, or, in 
other words, of receptivity and self-active 
spontaneity. Hearing and reading belong to 
the phase of receptivity; speaking and writing 
to the phase of spontaneity. In all language 
work which the common school is doing, the 
two phases, that of receptivity and that of 
spontaneous activity on the part of the chil- 
dren, should be represented. 

There is a balancing alternation between 
the receptive and spontaneous activities in the 
physical process of life. We take in food pre- 
pared by nature, and then the physical process 
self-actively converts this food into vital power. 
Similarly, in the mental work which educa- 
tion imposes on the child, the processes of 
receptivity and spontaneity should be made to 
alternate. Whatever the child gains in knowl- 
edge should be in some way or other converted 
into power. Power in connection with Ian- 



190 The Century and the School 

guage would be power to express things orally 
or in writing. This interaction of the recep- 
tive and self-active processes of the mind 
should be brought into play in all instruction 
in language, or reading, as well as in all other 
subjects. Instruction in reading that would 
aim exclusively at the absorption of the in- 
formation of the book, would not make full 
use of the opportunities which instruction in 
reading offers for the development of faculty. 
It would be one-sided training, receptive, but 
not cultivating spontaneous activity. Each 
lesson in reading requires for its sequel some 
exercise in which the words of the lesson are 
used by the child and in which he can express 
himself in regard to what he has read. 



FOLKLORE AND FAIRY TALES 

Desdemona would devour with greedy ear 
Othello's marvelous story of the Anthro- 
pophagi, or cannibals, or the men whose 
heads grow beneath their shoulders. The only 
witchcraft which the Moor used to woo and 
win her, was the stirring story of youth and 
adventure, danger and rescue. It was by the 
stories of genii and fairies that Queen Sche- 
herezade tamed the fierce passions of her lord 
and master, and, through his awakened inter- 
est, she made him amenable to gentler and 
more human feelings. All ages and climes 
have felt the enchantment of the household 
story and fairy tale. Story-telling attracts 
hearers in the Arabian desert and in the cof- 
fee-houses of Bagdad. It gathers cheering 
crowds round the stump-speaker from Georgia 
to Oregon. Every new generation is charmed 
again by the greatest of all story-tellers, 
Homer. Chaucer's tales are the fountain- 
head and inspiration of English literature. 
Story-telling through novel and romance is 
the most popular feature of modern literature. 

191 



192 The Century and the School 

Even the abstract doctrines of socialistic re- 
form, when clothed in the garb of a story, 
gain a most extensive and interested audience. 

Childhood is ever enchanted by the legend 
and household tale, and never tires of repeti- 
tion. The intense interest which the young 
take in these stories, suggests an important use 
to which they may be applied in cultivating 
young minds. Education should ever take 
cognizance of the points towards which the 
natural interest of youth tends, and use them 
as fulcrums for the spiritual levers by which 
child-nature is to be raised to higher culture. 
Since the strong, natural interests of child- 
hood should be made serviceable to rational 
education, the delight which children take in 
these household tales will justify the attempt 
to utilize them in the training of young minds 
and tender hearts. 

The telling of household stories and folk- 
lore tales, such as Jack the Giant Killer, Tom 
Thumb, Sleeping Beauty, The Wolf and The 
Kids, etc., is so universally used to amuse and 
instruct the young of all classes of society, 
that it is difficult to imagine that there ever 
could have been a time when these children's 
stories were unknown. Yet, old as they may 
be, their literary birth at least is of compara- 



Folklore and Fairy Tales 193 

tively recent date. It is not much more than 
200 years since they made their first appear- 
ance in the modern world of letters in Per- 
rault's Stories of Olden Times. While this 
was their first arrival in European literature, 
it is only within the last hundred years that 
the household tale became the subject of 
earnest study and general attention through 
Grimm's charming collection of Folklore, 
which was published in 18 12. 

Although Perrault said of his stories that 
"they lack sense, and therefore are designed 
for children that have not any sense as yet," 
it has become evident since Grimm's time that 
in all these incongruities and absurdities of 
fairy- and dreamland, there is a current of 
genuine good sense and sterling ethical value. 
If there were not this element in them, it 
would be difficult to account for the fact that 
these stories, "which lack sense," have sur- 
vived for thousands of years in the struggle 
for existence, to which popular traditions, too, 
are subject, and in which only the fittest will 
live. While these stories have existed in 
European literature but for a short time, 
their age has been traced through tradition 
into the darkening shadows of prehistoric 
times. Perrault and Grimm did not invent 

13 



194 The Century and the School 

they gathered. Some of the stories that are 
familiar to everybody, such as La Fontaine's 
Story of Perette, the milkmaid, — who is build- 
ing up a fortune in her thoughts from the pro- 
ceeds of the milk which she is carrying to 
town, and whose day-dreams end when she 
accidentally spills the milk, — have been traced 
back through the literatures of Europe and 
Asia, to France, Spain, Italy, Greece, thence 
to Persia and Hindoostan, and, perhaps, to 
the Aryan ancestors of all Indo-European 
races. To the poet's question: 

"Should you ask me whence these stories, 
Whence these legends and traditions, 
With the odors of the forest, 
With the dew and damp of meadows?" 

Grimm could have returned no other answer 
than that of the poet himself: "I repeat them 
as I heard them." He took these stories 
as he obtained them among the peasants of 
Germany; most of them he heard from the 
lips of the wife of a cowherd near Cassel. 
They were told him with such reverence for 
the form which old tradition had given them, 
that the scholar did not feel warranted to 
deviate from it in giving them to the world. 
These household stories, even where we 
cannot trace their transmission from race to 



Folklore and Fairy Tales 195 

race, contain in themselves strong circum- 
stantial evidence of great age. They speak of 
a time and a civilization when man's kinship 
with the animal kingdom, and even with the 
inorganic world, was an established fact in his 
mind. The animal, in these tales, is wise and 
powerful. It serves, protects and even guides 
man; it has language, and sagaciously coun- 
sels him; it may assume human shape. The 
kinship between the two is so close that man 
and animal are often transformed into each 
other. Puss in Boots is wiser than his mas- 
ter and helps him with sly cunning to happi- 
ness and fortune. Puss is wiser and stronger 
than even the giant, whom it avails little, that 
he can assume any animal form at will. 

It is not difficult to conceive that in the 
remote past the ancestors of modern civiliza- 
tion may have held views similar to those 
reflected in these household stories and may 
have looked upon the animal world as man's 
kindred, as a mysterious, wise and powerful 
race. We know that such beliefs and views 
do exist among barbarous tribes at the 
present time. The peculiar superstition of 
savage life that is known under the name of 
"Totemism," contains a kind of barbarous 
philosophy, and crude doctrine concerning 



196 The Century and the School 

the origin of world, of life and death, with 
a stringent code of tribal ethics. 

"And they painted on the grave posts 
Of the graves, yet unforgotten, 
Each his own ancestral totem, 
Each the symbol of his household; 
Figures of the bear and reindeer, 
Of the turtle, crane and beaver." 

Totemism shows a view of the animal king- 
dom that is strangely akin to the world of the 
household tale and the important part which 
animals play in it. The savage looks upon 
the animal of his tribe, or his totem, as the an- 
cestor and protecting genius of his race, and 
attributes unlimited power and wisdom to it. 

Many of the features of Totemism as they 
can be observed today in the primitive social 
organization of savage tribes, remind us of 
traits found in legend and household tale. It 
looks as if the weird ethics of Totemism had 
left their traces in them. When we read that 
with some tribes the husband's name must not 
be spoken by the wife, we think of a corre- 
sponding feature used in the modern version 
of Lohengrin. The cannibalism of savagery, 
the medicine man's power to assume animal 
form at will, is the content of more than one 
story. The belief of Totemism that objects 
have souls is found in the talking bread and 



Folklore and Fairy Tales 197 

the talking apples of the story of "Mother 
Holle." The idea of the "Taboo" is con- 
tained in "Bluebeard," "Aladdin" and others. 

The prominent position which many 
household stories assign to the smallest or 
youngest child finds some analogy in primi- 
tive society. In many polygamic tribes the 
law obtains that the youngest son is the heir. 
No feature is found more frequently in fairy 
tales than that the youngest or smallest child 
is represented as wiser or better than others, 
and becomes their leader. 

Besides the evidences of prehistoric tribal 
existence, there are found in these legends the 
traces of awakening spiritual life, of a time 
when man dimly divined the existence of per- 
sonality behind the forces of nature, ruling 
over and guiding their play through intelli- 
gence; of a time when the phenomena of na- 
ture first appealed to him as the manifestations 
of some supreme, invisible power which he 
fancied to be like himself, a person in shape 
and being, but grander. Round the common 
phenomena of nature he wove the myths of 
personality. The sun which dies in the splen- 
dor of its power in the red dawn, when he 
stoops to the great water of the West becomes, 
in the Nibelungen-story, Siegfried, the gold- 



198 The Century and the School 

enhaired, who is killed by Hagen while stoop- 
ing to drink from the spring in the woods. 
The story of the sun becomes, in the Welsh 
tradition, the myth of King Arthur dying 
in the fulness of his strength, in the West, by 
the great water, in which he is buried. The 
story of the "Sleeping Beauty" personifies 
autumnal nature that must sleep through the 
torpor of Winter, until the kiss of a beautiful 
prince, Spring, calls her back to life. There 
is also plentiful evidence of the later arrival 
of Christianity. Not unfrequently the old 
background of superstition remains, but the 
action and moral of the story have become 
modern and Christian. Many other stories 
are unalloyed types of purest Christian 
thought. 

No less remarkable than the age of these 
stories is their universal spread. The tales 
that Grimm recorded as he heard them from 
the mouth of a German peasant woman, have 
been found in similar form in almost every 
part of the globe, among the tribes of Africa, 
among the Malay races, or among the North- 
American Indians. Some appear in almost 
identical form in the stories of the plantation 
negroes of the South, as told by Uncle Remus. 
There are strange analogies between "Rey- 



Folklore and Fairy Tales 199 

nard the Fox," which Goethe has made mod- 
ern and immortal in his epic, and the inex- 
haustible adventures of Bre'r Rabbit and 
Bre'r Fox. 

To account for the spread of these stories 
by assuming that they were transmitted from 
one land and race to others, is quite out of 
the question when the distances in location 
and time, and the differences in race and lan- 
guage are considered; the wide diffusion of 
the legends remains a mystery. Their close 
agreement in subject or plot and their uni- 
versal spread, however, are evidences of the 
fact that the thought of the childhood of races 
is similar in drift everywhere, and that these 
stories have ever been the product as well as 
the delight of the child-mind. 

The age and universality of these stories 
are of interest to the student of language or 
of anthropology. They possess a third char- 
acteristic which appeals more directly to the 
teacher and suggests their use in education. 
Not a few of them contain the noblest ethical 
lessons and teach wise rules of conduct in the 
simplest and most child-like form. 

When through frequent repetition an at- 
tractive story of strong moral bearing has once 
been lodged in the mind of the child, a pal- 



200 The Century and the School 

pable ethical truth takes root with it and may 
be made to grow and blossom. The Her- 
bartian system of education, which numbers 
many adherents among the thoughtful teach- 
ers of Germany, has recognized the ethical 
value of the household tale, and has assigned 
to it a central place in primary instruction 
around which all other work is grouped. 
They make the story of the medium of what 
they call "Gesinnungs-Unterricht," or, of les- 
sons for the ethical adjustment of the child's 
mental attitude. They consider this the most 
important subject of early school-training. 

How there can be in these stories of olden 
times this peculiar admixture of an old, bar- 
barous element with grand ethical truth, is 
not difficult to see. It follows directly from 
their great age. Long before they were re- 
ceived and fixed in literature, they were 
handed down in a more fleeting form from 
generation to generation by oral transmission. 
Round the fireside where the ancient grand- 
mother with her busy spinning wheel sat, the 
children gathered to listen with breathless 
interest to the tale of the Wolf and the seven 
little Kids, of the Golden Goose, of Little 
Snow-White or Little Red Riding Hood. 
The spell of romance which charmed Desde- 



Folklore and Fairy Tales 201 

mona and the enchantment of Queen Schehe- 
rezade have been felt by each new generation 
of children. Through the influence of the 
story their thoughts were widened and their 
feelings refined. There were neither books 
nor schools in those early times. The art of 
reading was unknown among the people, and 
the traditional folklore stories formed a 
spiritual interest that had no rival in the 
routine of their lives or in the thoughts of 
young and old. Their minds dwelt on them 
with affection. They were the only intellec- 
tual feast to which childhood was invited, and 
when through repetition and interest they had 
become fixed in the soul of the new genera- 
tion, this knowledge was never lost, and at a 
later time the hearers related these wonderful 
tales in turn to their own children. 

These stories were thus preserved by be- 
coming assimilated in the minds of men that 
heard and told them. Minds, however, 
change as time changes, and with these minds 
the stories themselves must have suffered 
mutation and change. As man adjusted him- 
self unconsciously to the never ceasing march 
of civilization which has by easy steps of slow 
evolution transformed savagery into culture, 
these stories that dwelt for ages in the minds 



202 The Century and the School 

of men must have participated in the change. 
The barbarous element in them receded, and 
the ethical truth became stronger, as man was 
being transformed from a savage into an 
ethical being. 

The predominance of the ethical element 
in these stories may also be accounted for by 
the character of the audience which they al- 
ways commanded. In those long epochs of 
oral transmission they were told to listening 
youth by wise old age whose task and aim it 
naturally was to guide and rule the young. 
In epochs when scholastic training had no 
existence, all parental effort in the training 
of the young naturally tended in the direction 
of good behavior and rectitude of action, and 
it was natural that much educational advice 
and counsel should be skilfully and pleasantly 
imparted by the older people in the guise of 
cherished story or fairy tale. The household 
story was the earliest ethical study in the edu- 
cational curriculum of the race; it was used 
for ages before schools existed, and as a means 
of moral training it deserves again a promi- 
nent place in the Kindergarten and Primary 
School. 

The features of primitive life which folk 
lore embodies have suffered attrition through 



Folklore and Fairy Tales 203 

constant contact with the vigorous life of a 
nobler civilization and are so much obliter- 
ated that their presence is discerned by the 
scholar rather than the reader. In a corre- 
sponding degree the lessons of modern life, the 
rules of conduct, the nobleness of moral ac- 
tion have become more prominent. 

We have considered the age and origin 
of the household story, in order to suggest 
the necessity of a careful selection for the pur- 
poses of the Kindergarten and to show the 
principle which should guide the choice, 
namely, the ethical value and the fitness of ap- 
plication to child-conduct. Fortunately, the 
number of thoroughly pure and noble stories, 
that are at the same time of deepest interest 
to child-nature is almost unlimited. 

We have so far treated these stories as if 
all of them were old and traditional. Yet 
this is by no means the case. Modern litera- 
ture, following the lead of ancient tradition, 
has invented a countless host of such tales for 
children, and the hand of masters, like Ander- 
sen, has produced many little gems of child- 
lore which need not shun comparison with the 
best traditional heirlooms. 

No better means to convey early ethical 
instruction can be found. With a child of 



204 The Century and the School 

tender age the same moral which when put 
into the abstract form of a maxim or com- 
mand will tire or repel, will interest and be 
assimilated when clothed in the garb of a 
simple and attractive tale. Story-telling may 
be so arranged and conducted as to become a 
power in the child's education. 

There is no end to the special ethical 
doctrines which household stories teach : help- 
fulness to others, self-sacrifice, devotion and 
gratitude to parents, modesty, courage in dan- 
ger, respect for old age, sympathy for suffer- 
ing, reverence, pity, humility and fortitude 
and countless similar traits are illustrated and 
inculcated by them. In the story of Tom 
Thumb, or Peppercorn, the seemingly small 
assumes importance. To counteract the 
child's destructive propensities and careless- 
ness with things, man's dependence on the 
most insignificant objects is illustrated. To 
curb the tyranny of the older and stronger 
child, many household tales extol the wis- 
dom and love of the weakest and youngest 
brother or sister and recommend them to the 
respect and consideration of the older. Kind- 
ness to animals is taught, since the lower world 
is constantly represented as sharing the life of 
the human race in sentiment and fate. Goe- 



Folklore and Fairy Tales 205 

the's Faust in his prayer thanks the Divine 
Spirit for his kindly gifts and for none more 
than that he taught him to know his kinship 
to all living creatures : 

"Thou gav'st me nature for my kingdom grand, . . . 
The ranks of living creatures thou dost lead 
Before me, teaching me to know my brother, 
In air and water, and the silent wood." 

The same thought was beautifully ex- 
pressed by Francis of Assisi in his sermon in 
the fields when he spoke of "The Birds, my 
brothers." Sympathy with animals is a step 
in the direction of the love which the child 
owes to man, and the household tale teaches 
these lessons constantly. Hospitality and 
kindness to the stranger recommend them- 
selves to the child when he hears of the fairy 
that visits the house of the rich and poor in 
humblest guise, and rewards courtesy and 
benevolence. He sees laziness, disobedience, 
rudeness, cruelty and churlishness punished. 
Fiction often is a good guide to reality; it 
leads the child to form a kind of image of the 
life beyond the threshold of nursery and kin- 
dergarten, and he learns to realize that it will 
demand respect for others, industry and truth, 
and that happiness and success will be the 
reward of these virtues. 



206 The Century and the School 

Courage and hopefulness are taught; at 
times the story takes a semi-humorous form, as 
in the tale of "The Youth who went to learn 
Fear," but in most instances the direct moral 
is, that with a just cause even the young and 
the weak need not fear the giants of the world. 

In addition to these general ethical truths 
many other lessons of child conduct are incul- 
cated, especially in the animal stories. None 
of these lessons occurs more frequently than 
the doctrine that the sum and substance of the 
child's code of morals is found in the duty of 
obedience to his parent. That the parent 
wills nothing but what is good, that he is 
wiser than the child, and that disobedience is 
a peril, forms the substance of tales like the 
Wolf and Seven Kids. 

Since the ethical content of these stories is 
altogether inexhaustible, there is hardly any 
limit to their usefulness in moral instruction. 
The interest with which the child listens to 
their enjoyable content is transferred uncon- 
sciously to the higher truth which they em- 
body, and their introduction into nursery and 
kindergarten may contribute towards the 
highest aim of all educational efforts, the 
building of a rational and ethical character. 



'HE following pages contain advertisements of a few 
of the Macmillan publications on education, etc. 



A LIST OF BOOKS FOR TEACHERS 

Published by The Macmillan Company 



ADAMS, John. Exposition and Illustration in Teaching. 

Cloth. viii+U28 pages. $1.25 net. 

ARMSTRONG, Henry E. The Teaching of Scientific Method 
and Other Papers on Education. 

Cloth. xxvii+50U pages. $1.75 net. 

ARNOLD, Felix. A Text-book of School and Class Manage- 
ment. I. Theory and Practice. 

Cloth. 12mo. xxii+U09 pages. Index. $1.25 net. 

II. Administration and Hygiene. 

Cloth, xii+292 pages. $1.00 net. 
Attention and Interest. Cloth, vii+272 pages. $1.00 net. 

BAGLEY, William Chandler. Classroom Management: Its Prin- 
ciples and Technique. By William Chandler Bagley, Director 
of School of Education, University of Illinois. 

Cloth. 12mo. xvii+352 pages. $1.25 net. 

Craftsmanship inTeaching. Cloth. X+U70 pages. $1.10net. 

Educational Values. Cloth. 12mo. $1.10 net. 

The Educative Process. Cloth. 12mo. xix+358 pages. $1.25 net. 

BROWN, John Franklin. The American High School. By John 
Franklin Brown, Ph.D., formerly Professor in Education and Inspector 
of High Schools for the State University of Iowa. 

Cloth. xii+U98 pages. 12mo. $1.25 net. 

BUTLER, Nicholas Murray. The Meaning of Education, and 
Other Essays and Addresses. By Nicholas Murray Butler, 
President of Columbia University. 

Cloth. 12mo. xii+230 pages. $1.00 net. 

CHUBB, Percival. The Teaching of English. By Percival Chubb, 
Principal of High School Department, Ethical Culture School, New 
York. Cloth. 12mo. xvii+Ull pages. $1.00 net. 

COLLAR, George, and CROOK, Charles W. School Management 
and Methods of Instruction. By George Collar and Charles 
W. Crook, London. Cloth. 12mo. viii+836 pages. $1.00 net. 

CRONSON, Bernard. Methods in Elementary School Studies. 

By Bernard Cronson, A.B., Ph.D., Principal of Public School No. 9, 
Borough of Manhattan, City of New York. 

Cloth. 12mo. 167 pages. $1.25 net. 
Pupil Self -Government. 

Cloth. 12mo. ix+107 pages. $.90 net. 

CUBBERLEY. Syllabus of Lectures on the History of Edu- 
cation. With Selected Bibliographies and Suggested Readings. By 
Ellwood P. Cubberley, Second Edition, revised and enlarged. In two 
parts. Part I, v+129 pages, $1.50 net; Part II. xv+361 pages, $1.50 net. 

Complete in one volume, $2.60 net. 

DE GARMO, Charles. Interest and Education. By Charles De 
Garmo, Professor of the Science and Art of Education in Cornell 
University. Cloth. 12mo. xvii+2S0 pages. $1.00 net. 

The Principles of Secondary Education. 

Vol. I, Studies. Cloth. 12mo. xii+299 pages. $1.25 net. 
Vol. II, Processes of Instruction, xii+200 pages. $1.00 net. 
Vol. Ill, Ethical Training. x+220 pages. $1.00 net. 

DEXTER, Edwin Grant. A History of Education in the United 
States. By Edwin Grant Dexter, Professor of Education in the 
University of Illinois. Cloth. xxi-Y 665 pages, 8vo. $2.00 net. 



A LIST OF BOOKS FOR TEACHERS— Continued 



DUTTON, Samuel T Social Phases of Education in the School 
and the Home. By Samuel T. Dutton, Superintendent of the Hor- 
ace Mann Schools, New York. 

Cloth. 12mo. ix+259 pages. $1.25 net. 

DUTTON & SNEDDEN. The Administration of Public Educa- 
tion in the United States. By Samuel Train Dutton, A.M., and 
David Snedden, Ph.D. With an Introduction by Nicholas Murray 
Butler, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Cloth. 12mo. viii+595 pages. Bibliography. Index. $1.75 net. 

FITCH, Sir Joshua, educational Aims and Methods. Lectures 
and Addresses by Sir Joshua Fitch, late Her Majesty's Inspector of 
Training Colleges. Cloth. 12mo. xii+UUS pages. $1.25 net. 

Lectures on Teaching. 

Cloth. 16mo. xiii+393 pages. $1.00 net. 

FOGHT, Harold W. The American Rural School. By H. W. 

Foght, Professor of Education, Midland College. 

Cloth, xxii+366 pages. $1.25 net. 

GANONG, William F. The Teaching Botanist. By William F. 
Ganong, Ph.D., Smith College. 

Cloth. 12mo. Rewritten ed. xii+khh pages. $1.25 net. 

GILMAN, MaryL. Seat Work and Industrial Occupations. A 

Practical Course for Primary Grades. By Mary L. Gilman, Principal 
of the Clay School, Minneapolis, Minn., and Elizabeth L. Williams, 
Principal of the Holmes School, Minneapolis, Minn. 

Fully illustrated. Cloth. Square 12mo. lkl pages. $.50 net. 

GRAVES, Frank P. A History of Education before the Middle 
Ages. By Frank Pierrepont Graves, Ohio State University. 

Cloth. 320 pages. Bibliography. $1.10 net. 

HALLECK, Ruben Post. The Education of the Central Nerv- 
ous System. A Study of Foundations, especially of Sensory and 
Motor Training. Cloth. 12mo. xii+258 pages. $1.00 net. 

HANUS, Paul H. A Modern School. By Paul H. Hanus, Professor of 
the History and Art of Teaching in Harvard University. 

Cloth. 12mo. x+306 pages. $1.25 net. 

Educational Aims and Educational Values. By Paul 

H. Hanus. Cloth. 12mo. vii+221 pages. $1.00 net. 

HENDERSON, Ernest N. The Principles of Education. By 

Ernest Norton Henderson, Professor of Education and Philosophy in 
Adelphi College, Brooklyn. Cloth. 8vo. xiv+570 pages. $1.75 net. 

HERBART, John Frederick. Outlines of Educational Doctrine. 

By John Frederick Herbart. Translated by Alex. F. Lange, Associate 
Professor of English and Scandinavian Philology and Dean of the 
Faculty of the College of Letters, University of California. An- 
notated by Charles De Garmo, Professor of the Science and Art of 
Education, Cornell University. 

Cloth. Large 12mo. xi+3Sk pages. $1.25 net. 

HERRICK, Cheesman A. The Meaning and Practice of Com- 
mercial Education. By Cheesman A. Herrick, Ph.D., Director 
of School of Commerce, Philadelphia Central High School. 

Cloth. 12mo. xv-rS78 pages. $1.25 net. 

HORNE, Herman Harrell. The Philosophy of Education. By 

Herman Harrell Home, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Peda- 
gogy in Dartmouth College. Cloth. Svo. xvii+395 pages. $1.50 net. 



A LIST OF BOOKS FOR TEACHERS— Continued 



HORNE, Herman Harrell. The Psychological Principles of 
Education. 12mo. xiii-V 135 pages. $1.75 net. 
Idealism in Education. 

Cloth. 12mo. xxi-\-183 paaes. $1.25 net, 
HUEY, Edmond B. The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading. 
By Professor Edmund B. Huey, of the Western University of Pennsyl- 
vania. Cloth. 12mo. xvi+!t69 pages. $lM0net. 
JONES, Olive M., LEARY, Eleanor G., and QUISH, Agnes E. Teaching 
Children to Study. The Group system applied. 

Illustrated. Cloth. 12mo. viii+ 193 pages. $.80 net, 
KILPATRICK, Van Evrie. Departmental Teaching in Elemen- 
tary Schools. Cloth. 12mo. xiii+ 130 pages. $.60 net. 
KIRKPATRICK, Edwin A. Fundamentals of Child Study. By 
Professor Edwin A. Kirkpatrick, Principal of State Normal School, 
Fitchburg, Mass. Cloth. 12mo. xxi+38k pages. $1.25 net. 

Genetic Psychology. Cloth, xv+373 pages. $1.25 net. 

LAURIE, S. S. Institutes of Education. 

3d ed. Cloth, xii+391 pages. $1.90 net. 
MAJOR, David R. First Steps in Mental Growth. A Series of 
Studies in the Psychology of Infancy. By David R. Major, Professor 
of Education in the Ohio State University. 

Cloth. 12mo. xiv+360 pages. $1.25 net. 

THE McMURRY SERIES 

Each, cloth, 12mo. 
General Method 

The Elements of General Method. By Charles A. McMurry. 

323 pages. $.90 net. 
The Method of the Recitation. By Charles A. McMurry and 
Frank M. McMurry, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Teach- 
ing, Teachers College, Columbia University. 

xi+329 pages. $.90 net. 
Special Method. By Charles A. McMurry. 

Special Method in Primary Reading and Oral WorK 
with Stories. vii+103 pages. $.60 net. 

Special Method in the Rsading of English Classics. 

vi+25U pages. $.75 net. 
Special Method in Language in the Eight Grades. 

viii+192 pages. $.70 net- 
Special Method in History. vii+291pages. ^.75 net- 

Special Method in Arithmetic. vii+225 pages. $.70 net. 

Special Method in Geography. xi+217 pages. $.70 net. 

Special Method in Elementary Science. 

ix+275 pages. $.75 net. 
Nature Study Lessons for Primary Grades. By Mrs. Lida 
B. McMurry, with an introduction by Charles A. Murry. 

xi+191 pages. $.60 net. 
Course of Study in the Eight Grades 

Vol.1. Grades I to TV. vii+236 pages. $.75 net. 
Vol. II. Grades V to VIII. v+226 pages. $.75 net. 
MONROE, Paul. A Brief Course in the History of Education. 
By Paul Monroe, Ph.D., Professor in the History of Education, Teach- 
ers College, Columbia University. 

Cloth. 8vo. xviii+U09 pages. $1.25 net. 



A LIST OF BOOKS FOR TEACHERS— Continued 



MONROE, Paul. A Text-BooK in the History of Education. 

Cloth, xxiii+277 pages. 12mo. $1.90 net. 

A Source Book of the History of Education. For the 

Greek and Roman Period. Cloth, xiii+515 pages. 8vo. $2.25 net. 

O'SHEA. M. V. Dynamic Factors in Education. By M. V. O'Shea, 

Professor of the Science and Art of Education, University of Wisconsin. 

Cloth. 12mo. xiii+320 pages. $1.25 net. 

Linguistic Development and Education. 

Cloth. 12mo. xvii+3U7 pages. $1.25 net. 

PARK, Joseph C. Educational Woodworking for Home and 
School. By Joseph C. Park, State Normal and Training School, 
Oswego, N. Y. Cloth. 12mo. xiii+2 10 pages, illustrated. $1.00 net. 

PERRY, Arthur C. The Management of a City School. By 

Arthur C. Perry, Jr., Ph.D., Principal of Public School No. 85, Brooklyn, 
N. Y. Cloth. 12mo. viii+ 350 pages. $1.25 net. 

ROWE, Stuart H. The Physical Nature of the Child. By Dr. 

Stuart H. Rowe, Professor of Psychology and the History of Edu- 
cation, Training School for Teachers, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Cloth. 12mo. vi+211 pages. $.90 net. 

ROYCE, Josiah. Outlines of Psychology. An Elementary Treatise 
with Some Practical Applications. By Josiah Royce, Professor of the 
History of Philosophy in Harvard University. 

Cloth. 12mo. xxvii+392 pages. $1.90 net. 
SHAW, Edward R. School Hygiene. By the late Edward R. Shaw. 

Cloth, vii+255 pages. 12mo. $1.00 net. 
SHORTER, Edwin DuBois. The Rhetoric of Oratory. By the 
Associate Professor of Public Speaking in the University of Texas. 

Cloth. 323 pages. 12mo. $1.10 net. 
SINCLAIR, S. B., and TRACY, F. Introductory Educational Psy- 
cho logy. A book for Teachers in Training. 

Cloth. 180 pages. $.90 net. 

SMITH, David E. The Teaching of Elementary Mathematics. 

By David E. Smith, Professor of Mathematics, Teachers College, 

Columbia University. Cloth, xv+312 pages. 12mo. $1.00 net. 

SNEDDEN and ALLEN. School Reports and School Efficiency. 

By David S. Snedden, Ph.D., and William H. Allen, Ph.D. For the 
New York Committee on Physical Welfare of School Children. 

Cloth. 12mo. xi+ 183 pages. $1.50 net. 
VANDEWALKER, Nina C. The Kindergarten in American Edu- 
cation. By Nina C. Vandewalker, Director of Kindergarten Training 
Department, Milwaukee State Normal School. 

Cloth. xiii-\-27U pages. Portr., index, 12mo. $1.25 net. 

WARNER, Francis. The Study of Children and their School 
Training. By Francis Warner. 

Cloth. xix+26U pages. 12mo. $1.00 net. 

WINTERBURN and BARR. Methods in Teaching. Being the 
Stockton Methods in Elementary Schools. By Mrs. Rosa V. Winter- 
burn, of Los Angeles, and James A. Barr, Superintendent of Schools at 
Stockton, Cal. Cloth. xii+ 355 pages. 12mo. $1.25 net. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



A CYCLOPEDIA OF EDUCATION 

Edited by PAUL MONROE, Ph.D. 

Professor of the History of Education, Teachers College, Colum- 
bia University; Author of "A Text-Book in the History of 
Education," "Brief Course in the History of Education," etc. 



The need of such work is evidenced: By the great mass 
of varied educational literature showing an equal range in 
educational practice and theory; by the growing importance 
of the school as a social institution, and the fuller recognition 
of education as a social process; and by the great increase 
in the number of teachers and the instability of tenure which 
at the same time marks the profession. 

The men who need it are: All teachers, professional men, 
editors, ministers, legislators, all public men who deal with 
large questions of public welfare intimately connected with 
education — every one who appreciates the value of a refer- 
ence work which will give him the outlines of any educational 
problem, the suggested solutions, the statistical information, 
and in general the essential facts necessary to its compre- 
hension. 

Among the departmental Editors associated with Dr. 
Monroe are Dr. Elmer E. Brown, U. S. Commissioner of Edu- 
cation, Prof. E. F. Buchner, of Johns Hopkins, Dr. Wm. 
H. Burnham, Clark University, M. Gabriel Compayr6, In- 
spector-General of Public Instruction, Paris, France, Prof. 
Wilhelm Munch, of Berlin University, Germany, Prof. John 
Dewey, of Columbia University, Dr. Ellwood P. Cubberly, 
Stanford University, Cal., Prof. Foster Watson, of the 
University College of Wales, Dr. David Snedden, Commis- 
sioner of Education for the State of Massachusetts, and 
others. 



Send for a descriptive circular and list of con- 
tributors to Volume I 



To be completed in Jive large octavo volumes, each $5. 00 net 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



A TEXT-BOOK IN THE HISTORY 
OF EDUCATION 

By PAUL MONROE 

Professor of the History of Education, Teachers College, 

Columbia Uniyersity 

Cloth. Crown. 8vo. xxiii-\- 772 pages. $1.90 net, 

The aim of this book is to emphasize the great typical educational 
movements in thought and practice, and to give the student very definite 
conceptions of comparatively few leaders rather than to treat a multiplicity 
of more or less unrelated facts and a multitude of men with diverse ideas. 
In each general topic treated, enough material is given to elucidate the main 
characteristics. The contributions of two or three of the most representa- 
tive men are discussed for the same purpose. Since the restrictions of space 
and the working plan of the author forbid further elaboration, the text at 
almost every point is suggestive rather than exhaustively conclusive. A 
selected bibliography and a series of questions or suggestive topics accom- 
pany each chapter, to assist the student in further study. Chronological 
tables are given in connection with the more important historical periods, 
so that the student may get a conspectus of the period under consideration, 
and the relation of the educational to other aspects of historical develop- 
ment. A detailed analysis of the book aids in preserving a correct 
perspective and the proper relationship between the various topics. The 
numerous illustrations add a realistic touch to the discussion of the more 
practical aspects of the subject. 

BRIEF COURSE IN THE HISTORY 
OF EDUCATION 

By PAUL MONROE, Ph.D. 

Cloth. 12mo. xviii + 409 + m> pages. $1J25 net. 

This condensation of A Text-Book in the History of Education has been 
prepared to meet the demands of normal and training schools and of those 
colleges that have not sufficient time at their disposal to master the contents 
of a larger text. While the text at every point aims to be suggestive rather 
than exhaustive, even in this abbreviated form the volume contains more 
material than most other texts on the subject. The methods of presentation 
are the same as in the larger work. 

A SOURCE BOOK OF THE 
HISTORY OF EDUCATION 

FOB THE GREEK AND ROMAN PERIOD 
By PAUL MONROE 

Cloth. 8vo. xiii + 515 pages. $2.25 net. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



FEB 15 1912 



FEB 15 1912 









One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



FEE IS 



1312 



